There are no dangerous thoughts – thinking itself is dangerous,” wrote Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), an influential public intellectual, historian and philosopher, and the first woman to achieve the status of full professor at Princeton.
It is a huge joy to look into the eyes of my five- and eight-year-old granddaughters listening to one of Grampa’s many stories, watching the wheels of their brains creak and twist as they evaluate it for believability. Is it truthful, are the facts correct, do the inferences make sense? Knowing that the last dozen yarns have all been dubious fabrications that couldn’t possibly have been real, they are skeptical. They question my facts, doubt tenuous connections, and all the while balance their existing knowledge with the new information in the story.
With curiosity, observation, reasoning, and reflection, they are thinking critically while communicating their doubts to each other with whispers. The verdict is negative—an elephant wearing really high running shoes still would not be taller than a giraffe. Score one for our collective future.
That we, or more accurately, the majority of us are exercising less critical thinking now than in decades past is not in doubt. As just one example, a recent study released by Lenovo, an international computer hardware company, followed young Gen Zs and Millennials in Japan, Britain, Germany and the United States that had experienced the disruptions of the Covid years. The research noted a switch from big-picture, multi-dimensional thinking to thoughts focused on day-to-day challenges; immediate action took precedence over long-term, considered deliberations. There is no evidence this trend is reversing now that Covid is receding.
The most cited reasons that critical thinking is diminishing are not a surprise. Attention spans are declining, and not just in younger generations. Emotional responses come quicker and are more visceral than intellectual ones at any age, making us all susceptible to media that is designed to excite us rather than lead us into time-consuming thought processes.
For many, we react to information rather than analyze it, wolf down opinions and sound bites rather than devote the time necessary to digest and evaluate them. As more information becomes available we glance and skim just to keep up rather than read and reflect. Time for scrutiny is out of the question.
The potential risks associated with the decline in critical thinking are likewise well documented. On a personal level, our decision-making suffers. We rely on our biases, and the positive reinforcement profit-motivated algorithms provide for those biases, rather than assess facts, look for nuances, verify sources and discuss concepts and connections with those outside our individual silos.
For many, we react to information rather than analyze it
On a broader level, public engagement becomes less meaningful. The loudest voice, catchiest slogan, or most audacious social media post takes precedence over complex thought, truth, ethics and reasoned argument.
How do we resist this trend? Self-education, and recognizing the need for increased teaching of critical thought in our schools are both crucial. It is believed that the ability to think critically is not yet lost from our brains—we’re simply not using that capacity.
Western University’s Centre for Teaching and Learning is a support resource for university instructors, and offers a detailed description of how to foster critical thinking in students. Students must understand that the following are integral to developing critical thinking: adopting a systematic approach to problem solving; searching for inconsistencies in ideas, connections, and reasoning; identifying the relative importance of facts and ideas; and questioning one’s own biases.
The guidance goes on to explain how instructors can best incorporate these skills into their lectures and classrooms in greater depth than space is available here, but notes that, “If there’s one thing we know for sure, it is that thinking skills can’t be learned if they’re not taught in as overt a manner as other content in college courses.”
Critical Thinking and Critical Literacy are also part of the official curriculum issued by the Province of Ontario for Grades 1 through 12, but measuring success in this area is much more difficult than in math, science or English, the subjects most often graded in standardized testing. As classrooms face the challenge which AI and social media present to students’ ability to think critically, many Ontario educators are hoping to change this emphasis to reflect process rather than product, as the curriculum suggests.
As adults long beyond the education system, the value that we place on maintaining our ability to think critically is on us.
Staying curious, seeking new ideas, information, and perspectives can be fun. Active listening is a skill we may struggle with, either because we’re already overloaded with info or because we shut out viewpoints that conflict with what we believe, but it is essential to critical thinking.
Gathering info, doing research, and having patience are consequential, as is analyzing what we discover. During the process it’s important not to believe everything we see or read, and always consider the source and their motivation for producing the material.
Challenging our own assumptions, and testing their validity and relationship to verifiable facts and knowledge before we form our opinions and conclusions, is important.
Read, read, read. Not the shallow 100-word click bait that is everywhere, but those provocative books that demand thoughtful reading to understand and appreciate. The ones that allow us to engage characters and viewpoints that we might never meet in person, experience places in the world that are beyond our ability to visit physically, or confront emotions that simply would never be expressed in normal conversation.
Question everything, all the time.
But we know all this, don’t we? Perhaps the first genuine step toward regaining or maintaining our ability to think critically is to guarantee ourselves the time to step back and escape our distractions for an hour or a day.
Bike ride anyone?
