Critical Thinking Lectures are an Emergency in Education

In a century in which there are lots of sources to gather knowledge, people are having difficulty in determining whether the data is reliable or not. Accordingly, considering the fact that all of the information people can get through multimedia does not always reflect the reality, it can be proclaimed that people need good analysis skills to evaluate the information regarding to its validity and reliability. At this point, critical thinking appears as a survival skill in this modern era. Gülcü, Gülen, Şeşen, and Tokdemir (2009) state that “critical thinking means thinking about thinking in order to decide what to believe and how to behave” (p. 189). Then, what should be done to provide people with this crucial skill? The answer is that people need to start learning critical thinking in the early stages of schooling. Therefore, there should be a “critical thinking lesson” in schools’ curriculum.

Some people assert that critical thinking lessons would be unnecessary for schools’ curriculum because it is already provided by other lessons. They hold that as a scientific method, it is already taught in lessons such as chemistry or physics. However, these lessons are insufficient for a clear comprehension of critical thinking. Actually, children should use critical thinking in every part of their life, so using this analysis skill only as a method for scientific knowledge is quite misleading. Parallel to this, Kraft (2000) argues that the alternative approach that claims critical thinking is a result of ordinary schooling is somewhat mistaken. On the contrary, this approach is against the basics of critical thinking as there is not a constant point of view in this method. Rather, critical thinkers have such a lifestyle that they are suspicious about the facts which are taken for granted by everyone (p. 79). The other assertion people make is that wrong analysis by students can cause disruption of ethical and moral values of society. Students can criticize the norms of the society and it could be dangerous for the future of traditional and cultural merits. In fact, this approach results from the lack of knowledge about the dynamics of the societies. Ethical and moral values are prone to change and should be criticized if necessary. No value is stable in societies forever and they might be changed when it is a need to adapt the developing world.

To begin with, critical thinking lessons, if conducted properly, could eliminate several problems which we can see in society. Prominent problems of a society basically cause from the insufficient education system. Indeed, people’s awareness of what is really going on around them should be increased by providing them with critical thinking skills for the welfare of a country. Fisher (2003) says that in order to assist children to grow up as self-assured, intellectually confident citizens who are willing to engage in rational debates as members of an egalitarian society, a community of inquisition can be highly effective (p. 55). As a result of this community of inquisition, anti-secularism which is an obstacle for the development of the countries cannot find any supporters to sustain its existence. Next to this, people called ‘charlatans’ who aim to deceive the society to maintain an unfair income by using people’s trust in religion and science can no longer cause serious problems in the country when most of the citizens have critical inquiry by the help of their schools. For example, in this community of critical analysis, people would not be deceived by the fallacies like “black magic” or pseudo-science. Thus, handicaps of a country that hold back its development can be eliminated through implementation of critical thinking lesson in schools.

Second, critical thinking lesson would help students get better in nearly all other lessons. To illustrate, if children are able to critically evaluate the texts they read in literature or language lessons, they might be much more successful because of the well comprehension of these writings. In addition, in mathematics, they would not only try memorizing the solutions of different problems but they aim to learn the basics of how to solve problems. In other words, because they learn how to learn in critical thinking lessons, their attitudes toward lessons change from the aim to memorize to the urge to learn. Freire states that conventional method in schools is to expect children to memorize everything without analyzing and evaluating the information (as cited in Kraft, 2000, p. 75). This system of schools should be totally abandoned in order society to have critical thinking members who are the only hopes for the development of the country. The first step to be taken is to put a critical inquiry lesson in schools’ curriculum and to stop expecting pupils parroting back the knowledge they acquire in schools.

In conclusion, critical thinkers are the “critical needs” of a society. What schools, as quite important places for the socialization process of children, should take into consideration is that an additional critical analysis lesson is an immediate need of education system. In order to catch up the high standards of the modern countries, we should not be afraid of the criticism of our moral norms. To get rid of the unawareness of people that causes several problems in society and to have better achievements in schools, education curriculum needs a re-arrangement for the critical thinking lectures.