Critical Thinking – NOT Magical Thinking

Posted by Cheryl | 0 comments

When I first started homeschooling five years ago, I picked up a book called The Well Trained Mind - a guide to giving your child a classical education at home. This book set the foundation for my homeschool approach and gave me a solid plan to start out on this homeschooling adventure. Since then I have moved away slightly from the classical methods outlined in this book and have now become somewhat eclectic in my homeschool approach.

Filed away in the recess of my mind though was some information I gleamed from the book about teaching our children to think critically once they reach a certain age. Since my oldest daughter is now eleven I’ve been keeping a keen eye out for signs that she may be ready to start thinking on a more critical level. According to most classical models, this logic stage can happen between the ages 10 and 13. This is not a post so much about The Well Trained Mind, nor is it a post about the classical model of teaching. It is a post however, about the importance of instructing our children in the skill of being able to think logically – through deduction and reasoning. We refer to this as critical thinking. It is a skill that is not taught in most schools, and it is a skill that is absolutely foundational in order to support an argument or belief system.

Over the last year I’ve been drawn to certain kinds of books for my own reading. Books like It Couldn’t Just Happen by Lawrence O. Richards, and more recently – The Lie Evolution by Ken Ham. I am acutely aware of God’s prompting and leading in the very foundational topic of creation vs. evolution. How we view the world in many subjects of education, stems from one’s core belief system. However, this is not a post about arguing creation vs. evolution, it’s about the importance of instructing our children in the skill of critical thinking. Without this skill, one often ends up in a heated, pointed, emotional argument with weak supports, or even worse, ends up avoiding important discussions all together.

Critical thinking helps us look outside the box, so to speak. It teaches us to explore both sides of an argument, and can be defined as thinking that: consists of mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation. It includes possible processes of reflecting upon a tangible or intangible item in order to form a solid judgment that reconciles scientific evidence with common sense.

Magical thinking, on the other hand, can be loosely defined as: non-scientific causal reasoning. Magical thinking can occur when one simply does not understand possible causes, but can also occur in response to situations that are largely random or chaotic, as well as in situations that one has little or no control over, especially those one is emotionally invested in.

How many people do you know of in the latter category? Additionally, how many people do you know who eagerly throw their opinions around (some quite influentially) without any skill to be able to back up those very same opinions? Can you see how important it is to teach our children to think critically?

Isaiah 1:17-18 says:
17 Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. 18 “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD.

Yes, let us reason together – teach your children to reason. Isn’t that The Heart of the Matter?