The Importance of Critical Thinking

 

Have you ever heard of critical thinking? Is critical thinking important?. The skills to think critically are important. Many people still can't think or respond to something critically, including me. I also can’t think critically, therefore I am very eager to learn so I can think critically. Every day we always faced with various problems or certain problems, some are easy, some are small, some are difficult, and some are influential and not too influential on us. We can't face all of these problems with a binary way of thinking. Often these issues or narratives have lots of gray areas, not as easy as black and white. Therefore, we need a skill so that we can make a mature and wise decision, this is the point of which we have thought about. It is so essential that critical thinking is one of the skills that we must have in the 21st century. Critical thinking does not only apply when we are at school or in lectures or at work, but literally every day we really have to be able to think critically. However, sometimes there are some people in our environment who cannot encourage us to think critically, such as when someone asks too many questions or thinks too highly of them, they are perceived negatively, don't know why. Apart from being considered complicated, people like that are considered as knowing, pretending to be smart, when in fact if we think about it, people who ask a lot of questions because they don't know. For example, if we ask older people, we are often seen as annoying, rebellious, and impudent.

Because of this, most of us have an 'inherited opinion', to believe something because someone said so. But this doesn't mean that believing something from our parents or our religion or our teacher is not good, it is still good, but it would be nice if we had freedom of thought. We could identify, observe, and be able to analyze and understand an issue ourselves. In addition, sometimes it happens that we do something because it is commonplace or is often practiced by the people around us or by the surrounding community, then we end up doing something without knowing why we are doing it, what is it basically, is it useful or not for us. Before we believe in something, before we hold fast to the value of judgment, we can analyze it first, so that the background behind it is clear what makes sense. Critical thinking has been discussed by many experts and psychologists around the world, one of whom is John Dewey. According to John Dewey, reflective thinking is the active, persistent and careful consideration of any presumed belief or form of knowledge in the light of the reasons which support it, and the further conclusion to which it is ultimately drawn.

Critical thinking is a process, of identifying, observing, analyzing, evaluating, reflecting, then we form opinions based on the information that we have, and then decision making. Here, we must become active learners, must gather information, instead of those receiving information. Although it aims to make decisions, critical thinking is not just about agreeing or disagreeing or for yes or no. But to evaluate the narrative or problem as a whole, then to understand and consider all the nuances related to the problem. Why do we need to think critically?, because so that we have freedom of thought and have 100 percent rights over our decisions, second so that we are confident with opinions and objective self-thoughts because we have tried to reduce the biases we have, third we become more open minded because we are aware of arguments or other ideas that can be equally valid, fourthly we can understand the nuances or increase functional literacy, fifthly we can avoid fraudulent media manipulation such as the Ponzi scheme or the pyramid scheme of fake news.

Then, how do we think critically?, first we analyze the factors involved in a problem, secondly we must be aware of the possibility of bias towards something, thirdly we can identify other arguments or points of view related to the issue, fourthly we evaluate argument again to determine whether it is valid or not, fifth we must also pay attention to the effects and implications of the argument. But not every time we can always think critically. The way we think is also very much influenced by the emotional state. According to psychologist Jordan Peterson, one way to practice critical thinking is to write. I agree with that, because writing can train our brains to think systematically. When writing we can sort out which information is important and which is less relevant. And each paragraph must be easily digested to be understood, in the end we become trained to connect those abstract thoughts in our head.