FIKIR KRITIS #5

FIKIR KRITIS category

“Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.”

When we talk about thinking, we are using the mental operation to find meanings from experiences. The discrete and simple operation involved is called the thinking skill, whereas the complex and difficult operation is called the thinking process.

Let us look at the types of thinking skills involved. Thinking skills can be divided into two main types:

Critical thinking skill
Creative thinking skill

We will first look at what critical thinking is. Well, critical thinking actually involves the rearranging of concepts with the aim of evaluating certain ideas, issues, things or situations. It involves the ability to understand by way of rebutting statements, making judgments between the good and the bad, collecting information, and discarding hazy meanings and illogical conclusions. For example, in a scientific research, we must conduct an experiment in order to test a theory, hypothesis or principle of something. Through testing and experimentation, our thinking and the mind will make use of the above skills in reaching its aim of evaluating the validity of something.

The critical thinking skill can be further divided into:

the skill to analyze critically
the skill to evaluate critically

The skill to analyze critically improves one's experience and the ability to use the existing information. The skill to evaluate critically, on the other hand, will look into the logic behind the idea.
The other type of thinking, which is, creative thinking, is simply the ability to be original. This means a person has the potential to process information that can produce a new idea that is totally unique.
Creative thinking also involves the ability to produce many ideas, as well as being flexible in accepting and rejecting those ideas. Furthermore, a creative person is never static in his thinking, rather, he is able to elaborate and explain an idea analytically.

So, you see, critical and creative thinking skills are related and are used together while we are thinking. These skills are used when an individual is undergoing two thinking processes:

Decision making
Problem solving

Usually, a person will integrate both the thinking skills when making a decision based on the relevant information or when trying to solve a genuine problem faced. This is in order to evaluate the logic and rationality of every choice made so that the decision can be one that is based on the best option. This is what we call an integration of the process of thinking.

FIKIR KRITIS Critical Thinking Standards
Universal intellectual (Critical Thinking) standards are standards which must be applied to thinking whenever one is interested in checking the quality of reasoning about a problem, issue, or situation. To help students learn them, teachers should pose questions which probe student thinking, questions which hold students accountable for their thinking, questions which, through consistent use by the teacher in the classroom, become internalized by students as questions they need to ask themselves. The ultimate goal, then, is for these questions to become infused in the thinking of students, forming part of their inner voice, which then guides them to better and better reasoning. While there are a number of universal standards, the following are the most significant:

1 Clarity is the gateway standard. If a statement is unclear, we cannot determine whether it is accurate or relevant. In fact, we cannot tell anything about it because we don't yet know what it is saying.

2 Accuracy: A statement can be clear but not accurate, as in “This chicken weighs over 300 pounds."

3 Precision: A statement can be both clear and accurate, but not precise, as in “Yao Ming is tall!" (We don't know how Tall Yao Ming is. E.g. Precise = Yao Ming is 2.29 (7-6) meters tall. )

4 Relevance: A statement can be clear, accurate, and precise, but not relevant to the question at issue. For example, students often think that the amount of effort they put into a course should be used in raising their grade in a course. Often, however, the "effort" does not measure the quality of student learning, and when this is so, effort is irrelevant to their appropriate grade.

5 Depth: A statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (that is, lack depth). For example, the statement "Just say No" which is often used to discourage children and teens from using drugs, is clear, accurate, precise, and relevant. Nevertheless, it lacks depth because it treats an extremely complex issue, the pervasive problem of drug use among young people, superficially. It fails to deal with the complexities of the issue.

6 Breadth: A line of reasoning may be clear accurate, precise, relevant, and deep, but lack breadth (as in an argument from either teacher or student standpoint which gets deeply into an issue, but only recognizes the insights of one side of the question.)

7 Logic: When we think, we bring a variety of thoughts together into some order. When the combination of thoughts are mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is "logical." When the combination is not mutually supporting, is contradictory in some sense, or does not "make sense," the combination is not logical.

8 Fairness: Critical thinking demands that our thinking be fair: Open-minded, Impartial and Free of distorting biases and preconceptions

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