Daddy's Daze

  Critical Thinking, Take 1

When you read the following statement, what is your emotional response:

“Take from the rich, and give to the poor”

Is it a noble act?  Or is it robbery?

WRONG!

Critical thinking isn’t about the answer, it’s about understanding perspectives, definitions of words, context.

How many parties are there in the phrase?

What is the perspective of each party?

How do we know when someone is rich?  How do we know when people are poor?

How often should they “take” from the rich, and do the rich have any input?

What’s in it for the 3rd person (the one between the rich and poor person)?

Do we need a 3rd person/party in the transaction?

Why should poor people (how ever we define them) get money?  What good does it do?

Here’s what we came up with:

Clearly, they didn’t want dad to get a win on the first day of Critical Thinking, so they acted bored out of their minds and grumpy during the whole 20 minutes of conversation.  But, I know inside (deep, deep inside) a light flickered…the flame is just around the corner!

crit·i·cal think·ing

American history has been a bit of a challenge for me, but I believe our girls have been exposed to much more than most.  While that’s not my yardstick, that’s where we are.  I know that they know some of our founding fathers and that they were brilliant, thoughtful men and women.  They have been exposed to the concepts in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.  For now, we are in good shape.

For the next phase, we are going to work on one of my absolute favorite topics – Critical Thinking.  As I think back to my schooling, I didn’t get much exposure outside of some philosophy classes in college.  Most of the learning I had (and my kids have) was being provided “facts” that we “memorized” then show that we “memorized” these “facts” to the teachers satisfaction.  Personally, I believe that a multiple choice test is the sign of “education” gone poorly.

When kids can read or discuss something and ask questions, look from different perspectives, and really understand many sides of the content, then they are actually learning.  If they do it well enough, they can’t help but to have good judgement and be able to defend their belief, not by yelling the loudest or because they are the most obstinate, but because they have considered and questioned enough to be satisfied.  For now, the answer isn’t the goal. The goal is to question and gain understanding.

Here’s the format.  I provide a sentence or phrase, we write down their emotional response to the phrase, then we look at the phrase from every angle that we can.  While I’ll use the old who, what, when, where, how it won’t be as structured as that.  Sometimes we’ll use the 5-why’s etc.  It’s a conversation without conclusion.

Let’s see how it goes…

 Today is an historic day for these united stated of america.  Our congress has agreed that we shall not be ruled by a tyrannical king nor any man.  We believe that God should be our ruler, as He is the creator of the universe and of nature.  God has created us with equal rights of life, liberty and property (changed to Happiness in the final draft) and that governments are instituted among men to protect these rights; deriving their power from the consent of those governed.

To this cause and with the protection from God, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

My prayer for my children is a deep understanding of the above concept and be able to know how it is radically different than any other government structure, past or present.

So today we celebrate our county’s independence from England and for establishing a government under the radical idea that God is the leader and that free people can self-govern under God’s direction.  This begins the great “American Experiment.”