Dr. William A. Reed, Ph.D.
I find that I use a combination of critical thinking and
non-critical thinking in my day-to-day life.
I believe if I am always overthinking, I may be too dull and if I under think,
I may seem unintelligent. I have found a
happy medium…a comfortable place.
However, I do adjust the amount of critical and non-critical thinking I
used based on my situation and the company I keep.
As a critical thinker, I want to be logical, consistent, well
organized and effective. I want to
combine that with my non-critical thinking standards of having fun and being
spontaneous. All work and no play makes
Lou a dull boy, after all.
I have developed these standards or traits over the years. When I was young, I leaned more toward the
non-critical thinking standards. Having
fun and being spontaneous was more important than being serious and thinking
things through. Bordering on reckless,
my youth was spent doing things like riding bicycles, motorcycles, skateboards
and fast cars. I jumped off of cliffs,
climbed tall trees and searched caves.
What made doing these things even more dangerous was giving no thought
to dangers, taking no precautions and using zero safety equipment. I’m pretty sure that I was bullet proof
(tongue in cheek).
I joined the Army when I was eighteen years of age. My reasoning was multi-facetted but adventure
was the driving force. I would be able
to travel, drive war machines and shoot guns.
Then here came the big surprise.
The Army took precautions and safety equipment like earplugs and safety
googles. Everything was done with
cautious direction…safety first. I so
wanted to “Rambo” my M16 on the rifle range, but could not. I wanted to drive my jeep at full speed and
catch air jumping dunes, but could not.
I wanted to squeeze the trigger on machine guns and expend all ammo, but
could not. What was this? Safety?
I use to build ramps from plywood and jump my bike over obstacles. I never got hurt. It was safe in my mind. This started an awakening in my mind,
however. It was slow but it became a
part of me. As I grew in age and rank,
it became even more a part of me. I
found myself think multiple steps ahead.
Thinking through the “what if’s”.
Was it safe? If not, how could I
make it safer? How would outcomes change
is I changed situations or performance measures. This was the development of critical thinking.
When I finally joined the Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) Corps, the
Army began to formally teach me critical thinking. It was taught throughout the NCO Education
System and during NCO Professional Development.
According to Colonel W. Michael Guillet, Critical Thinking is: ‘There is only one thing harder than learning
to think critically—trying to define the concept in a comprehensive way. To arrive at a comprehensive definition, one
must consider the origins of critical thinking, some misconceptions about
critical thinking, and some of the attributes of critical thinking.
We can trace the origins of critical thinking back to the early
Greek philosophers. The word itself comes from two Greek words: Kriticos,
meaning discerning judgment, and kriterion, meaning standard. Among the
philosophers most closely associated with critical thinking was Socrates who
strived to find meaning and truth through serious questioning. In his day, Socrates embodied the ideas of
kriticos and kriterion, two ideas we will consider later when we address a
modern construct for critical thinking. He
developed the art of Socratic questioning to reach a more profound logic,
understanding, and reflective thought. In essence Socrates’ method was
the quest for reason and wisdom. Many
years after Socrates, Clausewitz too tried to define critical thinking. As mentioned earlier, Clausewitz called his
brand of critical thinking “Genius.” In his
definition, Clausewitz stated, “Genius consists in a harmonious
combination of elements, in which one or the other ability may predominate, but
none may be in conflict with the rest.” He further defines
critical thinking as “strength of mind” and as “…the
ability to keep one’s head at times of exceptional stress and violent emotion.”
While we have no evidence Clausewitz studied Socrates, there seems
to be little doubt Clausewitz understood critical thinking and helped solidify
the importance of critical thinking to strategic leaders.
Even with the clear writings of Socrates and Clausewitz, there are
still misconceptions about what constitutes critical thinking. Many people often use the term ‘critical
thinking’ without understanding the concept, the meaning, or how to apply it. Others progress to a stage sociologist Dr.
Richard Paul, calls activated ignorance that is, taking into
the mind and actively using information that is false though mistakenly
thinking it is true. Another
misconception involves the term ‘critical thinking’ itself. Critical thinking
is not being a critic or a cynic. Being
a critic or cynic is not critical thinking at all, but many times this is the
common practice. Some people even
confuse critical thinking with having a critical spirit. This does not mean being negative or
hypercritical of everything or every issue.
Exploring the attributes of a critical thinker will help lead to a
common definition. Critical thinking can be termed robust thinking because
it involves many different attributes. Most importantly critical thinking is a state
of mind whose goal is better thinking. The attribute is being repetitively cognizant
of one’s thought process. The term
‘meta-cognition’ has been used to describe this state of being—essentially
‘thinking about thinking.’ The mark of a good critical thinker
then is the ability to continually monitor thought patterns for emotional,
analytic, and psychological biases. Another
critical thinking attribute is a questioning or inquisitive attitude. Critical thinkers always ask questions to
learn more and arrive at greater depth of understanding. Critical thinkers appreciate and are not
threatened by contradictory information that does not match what is already
understood and accepted. Additionally
they are comfortable working with ideas and thinking of things in different
ways.
Finally critical thinkers like to
hold their thinking to high standards of objectivity. Taken together, these attributes give critical
thinking its robust qualities. Although
defining critical thinking is still difficult, Dr. Richard Paul, the foremost
scholar of critical thinking uses the following definition: Critical Thinking: (1) Disciplined, self-directed thinking that
exemplifies the perfections of thinking appropriate to a specific mode or
domain of thinking; (2) thinking that displays mastery of intellectual skills
and abilities; (3) the art of thinking about one’s thinking while thinking, to
make one’s thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible; (4)
thinking that is fully aware of and continually guards against the natural
human tendency to self-deceive and rationalize to selfishly get what it wants.
A more concise definition of critical thinking is: the
ability to logically assess the quality of one’s thinking and the thinking of
others to consistently arrive at greater understanding and achieve wise
judgments. There are many other
definitions of critical thinking and most are very similar. The key is to recognize that regardless of the
definition, critical thinking abilities can be individually developed.’
(Guillot, USAF, https://acc.dau.mil/)
COL Guillot’s definition and findings have been at the center of
my training as a military critical thinker.
My final immersion into critical thinking was when I attended the
U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy (USASMA).
The library found at USASMA opened more doors to critical thinking with
books from experts such as Richard Paul, Linda Elder, Ralph H. Johnson, J.
Anthony Blair, Trudy Govier, J. Carl Ficarotta, Martin E. P. Seligman, John P.
Kotter, Dan S. Cohen, Keith Holyoak and Robert Morrison. While at USASMA, I ready, studied, analyzed
and put into practice, these proven critical thinking skills described by these
experts.
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