Critical Thinking

What does one mean when they say critical thinking? Well, to some, they think it’s finding fault with other people or their thoughts and ideas. I can see how one would portray that idea especially with the word critical in the phrase. But the entire phrase “critical thinking” really means to develop a rational evaluation about what is believable and disbelievable. So to better summarize, critical thinking is comprised of four categories: open mindedness, differentiate emotion and reason, argue from knowledge not ignorance, and probability is not certainty. Critical thinking is something that everyone does everyday. Some people do it more than others. So why is it, when asked, we truly scare ourselves into thinking that we cannot do it? Our life experiences contribute to our opinions formed.
When we move onto reading, critical thinking is essential. Every book was written for a reason. Weather the book was written for pleasure, for learning, or for inspiration there is always an underlying lesson. Lets think about a children’s story, there is always something teaching them within the story, but they don’t even realize they are learning, because its fun. However, once we start breaking it down they start to see different aspect and retain different things, for example their colors. You may ask a child after reading about a shapes book what color each shape is and ask nothing about what the book was about, shapes. Did they learn something else from the book even though we showed them something completely different from the same book? You bet they did! Every book can be broken down into different areas, something that you didn’t even realize that you could learn from that book. You cannot simply read the surface of a book, you wont learn a thing. You wont even get the whole experience of that book. All the book would be are words on a page.
My own personal habits when reading is to read each chapter one by one. Ask myself a few questions along the way. Once the chapter is over, I reflect. I try to put myself into that book. If I don’t understand a chapter, I’ll go back a read it. Many times, I’ll find myself reading through a book two to three times, and somehow, I always find something new that I did not notice the first time around. This is the thing about books that I love. The story within a book is like a whole other world.
Critical thinking a way of life. It’s a way to dig deeper into an unknown world of a story, but, it’s not just for books, it’s for everyday situations. For example, you wake up at 5 am for work, your not just tired, your exhausted. You think to yourself, “I should just call into work.” but then you think “If I do, I will have one less day on my paycheck.” So you decide to go to work despite being exhausted. You made a rational decision after you thought about the situation and the different outcomes. I know that I use critical thinking very regularly. Reading the paper I find many bias remarks. Some people will just go along with what’s being said, I read the opinions, and form my own. I get my facts before I jump to a conclusion.
I expect to gain a lot from this class. I’ve already explored the thought of critically thinking, and realized that it’s a very big part of my everyday activities. I have never even thought about this topic before or even how much I do it. I can already see that this class is going to open my eyes and mind to a new way of thinking and writing. I’m not a great writer, but, I feel that by exploring different aspects of myself throughout this class, I will become a better writer.