Summary
I previously believed that critical thinking was the way a person thinks. After watching the videos, I realized it's exactly that with a bit more depth. According to Richard Paul, "Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it." Jesse Richardson doesn't provide an explicit definition of what critical thinking is but a practical one. He focuses his definition on the field of education, describing it more as a design that highlights teaching young students how to think rather than what to think. To me, it seems like both definitions are fairly similar because the objective of each speaker is to improve the way we think. Both Paul and Richardson underscore the importance of analyzing a situation in making connections to other observations or prior knowledge to improve our understanding. Furthermore, both speakers emphasize evaluation in the sense that we must consider any conclusions that we have drawn and disregard them if they are incorrect. Critical thinking is important because it leads to solutions that have substance. I especially agree with Richardson, who claims that currently, the world is approaching an “important and volatile period” and needs critical thinkers to see us through it.
One thought on “Ruth Andrusier Conversation 1”
Hi Ruth, I also agreed with Richardsons claim about the world approaching an important and volatile period and believe we need critical thinkers to see us through it because without them, we will continue to see history repeating itself and we’d see little to no change in peoples thoughts, behaviors, actions. We know from growing up and with the knowledge we were given in both videos, people can be really scared of “change” or being “wrong”, but with that narrow-mindedness, how else are we suppose to learn what is “right”?