How to become a SuperStar student, part 6

National Teacher of the Year Michael Geisen has much to say about critical thinking. In fact, what he mentions should be quite familiar to you, as you hear such comments in school as they apply to writing and speaking in many of your classes.

First, critical thinking is difficult work, but its use will help you move from a good student to a great student. And it is an essential skill that will help you throughout the rest of your life. It’s not just a school thing.

Once you understand that it is not considering just one idea and sticking with it, you are on the way to understanding that critical thinking involves looking at all sides of an issue and changing your mind if necessary to accommodate new information based on better evidence.

This use of evidence should not come as a surprise to you. Whether you are conducting a science experiment, giving a public speech, writing a research paper for history, or crafting a literary analysis paper, you use evidence to support your main idea. The best evidence, suggests Geisen, is that which is relevant, balanced, and fits with the other pieces of evidence you have. Sound familiar?

One of the biggest challenges in critical thinking is making sure you are looking at balanced evidence. Just as a judge needs to hear both sides of a legal case, so do you need to consider multiple points of view before coming to a conclusion. In writing an argument, for example, you know to include the opinions of the other side of the issue. This recognition of another view is part and parcel of critical thinking.

To strengthen your critical thinking, you need to argue against your own arguments. Geisen notes that when you pretend to disagree with your own position, you find the weak spots in your own assertions and can then find ways to make them stronger. This is crticial thinking at its best.

As you know, another technique is to write your main points and then write the evidence for each point beneath it. Whether you call this mind-mapping, outlining, making a graphic organizer or whatever, when you see all laid out before you the evidence you have, you can then see where the biases or weaknesses are and find the needed evidence.

Emotions may be good, but for persuasive writing or speaking, you need more than the way you feel. Factual evidence helps to support your feelings and offers credibility to what you say or write.

The world is not as simple as it may appear. There are few straightforward answers or simple solutions to real-world issues. The point of critical thinking is to recognize that and to explore the complexities of the issue at hand instead of trying to oversimplify life and making it black versus white.