Nov 16 2008
More tugs on critical thinking…
A respected friend of mine, Ruth Dickson, who wrote this hilarious book, made an observation on my post regarding critical thinking the other day (this is its Gather incarnation, complete with the comments). She was noting that the problem wasn’t that people wanted to have all the answers, but that they didn’t have any questions.
I had to ask myself how sad that was. After all, curiosity is natural, isn’t it? Kids come with it, at least all the kids I’ve ever known. In order for them to carry it through life, you just have to keep from squelching it. They want to learn, they want to know more, they’re up to their eyeballs in questions. So, that begs the question, what kills it for them? What changes so that they stop asking questions and stick fingers in their ears with “lalalala” when something that challenges their outlook on life comes along? Where do we lose them?
I had suggested that the level of critical thinking was dropping but another well-respected critical thinker I know, Nippy Katz, commented that he didn’t think the level had actually dropped but that it actually remains constant. I can’t say whether that’s true, but I can’t say that it’s not. I’ve only lived now (at least that I can remember - I don’t have an issue with the idea of reincarnation) and I’m dependent on what history has recorded for times before. One could make a good argument that any creative/critical thinking would be among the things recorded and, therefore, give a skewed view of the world back then.
What do you think? Is it becoming more scarce? Do you know why, if you think it’s changing? Or, if it’s always been here, what makes it seem like it’s becoming a rarity? I have an idea that perhaps that perception is tied to whether the culture, government, media or policy is being driven by the thinkers or by the parroters. Tell me what you think.
I think that it has changed - and continues to change - in large part due to the proliferation of media influences people are exposed to as a matter of course.
When you’re surrounded by people who are more than willing to tell you what to think - and sound authoritive - I think there is a temptation to believe what you hear…
or, in the case of conflicting views, to find and pay attention to only those which tell you what you want to hear.
Maybe the more a critical thinker develops his or her critical thinking skills, the more lacking in the general population it seems to be to that person.
There have always been overly-credulous and gullible people in our society (and indeed all over the world); they are the majority. But I don’t really know if the level of critical thinking is dropping; there’s no way to take a census on the issue.
I do think that the Internet age allows us to see the thoughts of thousands upon thousands of people we otherwise wouldn’t even know existed. If there seem to be less critical thinkers out there, it may be because we have access to millions of written thoughts that we didn’t back when we were kids - back in the days before computers invaded the home. Remember back in the day when we only had maybe 5 TV stations available to watch, and we thought that “if only we had more choices, maybe TV wouldn’t suck so bad”? Well, I have 170 channels on my DirecTV now, and the proportion of “good” to “suck” seems to be about the same. Maybe it’s the same way with what some perceive as a drop in the level of critical thinking - we just have more channels to watch, so to speak.
However, the thinkers and questioners are out there on teh intertoobz too, so there’s still hope.
I think you both have a good point. Getting a message to the sheep is easier than ever, especially since sheep are notorious to slavishly tuning in to their propaganda of choice.
But the perception of stupidity out there could indeed be magnified by the availability of press covering said stupidity. It used to be that making something public knowledge was a good bit of work and required a good bit of capital and/or skill; competition was fierce. Now, with any bit of flotsom available to the world with a few mouse clicks, it’s easy to stumble across any number of idiot things daily.