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CRITICAL THINKING – A must skill for 21st century

CRITICAL THINKING - A must skill for 21st century

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~ Albert Einstein

A few appalling facts about the current situation

  • In today’s corporate scenario, more than 80% of all the global leaders state critical thinking as the no.1 challenge in business. It is the threshold competence – a must, only then other competencies have value. Unfortunately, 90% of the employees in an organization fall short of this crucial skill.
  • A NAASCOM survey, a few years ago, estimated that only 25% of engineering college graduates are immediately employable in the IT industry, there is a huge gap in what industry seeks in its employees and what it actually gets
  • The World Bank and Stanford University conducted the study on 5,000 1st year and 3rd-year B.Tech students. The study reveals that Indian students have poor higher-order thinking skills.
  • The root cause of exploitation of a person in life by others is lack of critical thinking, said Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA) President Prof Narendra  Nayak.

What is Critical Thinking?

It refers to the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment. Critical thinking involves the evaluation of sources such as data, facts, observable phenomenon, and research findings. Good critical thinkers can draw reasonable conclusions from a set of information and discriminate between useful and less useful details to solve a problem or make a decision.

So what is the future of our children?

Have we ever wondered whether our children will have this compatibility when they will enter the real world?

Can we blame the schools for not teaching our kids these soft skills?

The traditional education system in our country needs immediate reforms and changes while adapting ourselves to the new world of the 21st century.

This new world is completely different from the education that we got in our times. The schools play a major role in imparting such type of education.

How do we develop critical thinking in our children?

  •       The academic work has Higher order thinking skills (HOTS) integrated in it
  •       Questioning the child’s answers to deeper and deeper reflection
  •       Use of various thinking tools- like Mind-map, PMI, KWL, ‘What if?’ scenarios? Let us look at an example:

How does this method of teaching affect critical thinking development?

Had it been a traditional method children would have been asked to memorize the facts and reproduce in a test, but here we did it differently and directed our students to think critically about the whole situation relating it to the present scenario. They have done the most levels of HOTS while creating the works in the notebooks.

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