Critical thinking is something that we have all heard about at some point in our lives, be it from an instructor at school, or from someone in the public eye, such as a political figure. But many of us have never really stopped to consider: what exactly is critical thinking? To put it simply, critical thinking is the act of reflection and problem solving. Like any skill, critical thinking needs to be taught and practiced to improve one’s understanding of it better. An example of a situation that you could use critical thinking in is talking about your favorite media with a friend. Your friend might not like whatever it is that you like, or vice versa, and through the use of critical thinking, you can both discuss what it is about the media that is disliked and exactly why that is. It might be something specific within the media, such as use of language that could be considered offensive to some. Through critical thinking, you can define exactly what it is about the language that is offensive, and share a new perspective on the same media with each other through it. But critical thinking does not just apply to media, but can also apply to other aspects in life as well, broadening your horizons and understanding of information.
What makes someone a good critical thinker is their willingness to suspend their own beliefs to further educate and understand something. But to become a good critical thinker, there are some skills that need to be practiced. A good critical thinker can interpret, analyze, infer, evaluate, explain, and self-regulate. Interpreting, analyzing, and inferring are all about explaining the meaning of the topic, examine ideas and arguments associated with the topic, and begin drawing conclusions about the topic. Evaluating and explaining are about researching and examining claims about the topic and then explaining the topic based on the results and conclusions drawn from the research. Finally, self-regulating is evaluating one’s own judgments and then correcting those judgements based on the conclusions drawn from research. Learning to apply these sets of skills helps not only improve one’s critical thinking skills, but sets them up to be able to solve a wide range of problems as well as formulate their own opinions, rather than relying on the opinions and biases of others.
Through the use of critical thinking, we can avoid what is known as black and white thinking. Black and white thinking is when you only see two sides of the whole, seeing whatever the subject is without any of the grey areas in-between. Those who partake in black and white thinking take the information at face value, rather than stopping to really analyze and thoroughly think about what it is they are looking at and come to their own conclusions. For example, the internet is full of many different websites with many different stories, and anyone can post just about anything they want to. So if I were to make a post about the moon being cheese and said that is was a scientifically proven fact with no research being shown to back up my claim, if no one decided to really think about, analyze, research, and come to their own conclusion on what I have stated and pointed out the flaws in my statement, then they might just believe what I have said without stopping to think for a second that it might just not be true. Without critical thinking, we would never really stop to analyze and reflect on subjects and recognize the flaws and biases within those subjects.
In conclusion, critical thinking is not just important in regards to school and politics, but also in daily life. It can allow someone to formulate their own opinions without relying on others while also analyzing exactly why they have that opinion and improving upon it or changing it completely based upon research done, keep them from falling into the habit of using black and white thinking, not seeing any of the grey areas in regards to a topic, and give themselves to tools to solve other problems, allowing them to be completely self-reliant when it comes to problem solving and forming opinions and coming to understand a wide variety of topics.