Do you feel afraid of defending your opinion in front of people? Have you ever had the feeling that you were not able to think by yourself? Do you prefer to write resumes instead of essays? Do you think you are not able to evaluate arguments? Is it difficult for you to make judgements? Do you think that it your opinions and thoughts are not valued at school?
If your answer is “yes” to any of the previous questions, it is probably because you are not a critical thinker. A critical thinker can be defined as a person who has the ability to defend opinions, evaluate arguments, make judgements, organize ideas, analyze, evaluate facts and solve problems. Critical thinking is not something common in the chilean educational system. For example, in my ELAB, it is easier to find teachers who prefer to make their students follow the rules without thinking about the reason why they have to. They do not encourage them to reflect about the causes and consequences of the things they do daily. Students can not make mistakes inside the classroom. If they do, they are punished. Therefore, they consider it to be safer to follow the order rather than to innovate. Pupils are not allowed to defend their opinions or organize their own ideas. They have to think like the teacher does, and agree with her/him in every single thing. For instance, when I was observing a lesson once, I could notice that the teacher preferred that students kept silence during the class. She didn’t encourage them to participate and was the only one that could talk during the lesson. She only asked them short answer questions but did not take into account their opinions and mistakes as a way of learning. Certainly, critical thinking is something non-existent in schools. Teachers do not give the possibility to children to think critically because they fear they could break the established order inside the classroom and neglect their lessons. Also, students could be dangerous to those teachers that do not consider different ways of learning to teach their students and that put into question the chosen methods. They are not prepared to teach by including another point of view, which means that they are not prepared to make their students think critically because they’re not even ready for it.
Critical thinking is the topic which is in vogue in education these days in Chile, because we realize the weakness of an educational system that lacks this approach. It is something that must be changed in order to transform our society. Schools are forming non critical persons that are taught to reproduce the social system and perpetuate the established norms without any possibility to change our reality or to even create values. Nowadays, schools are preparing students to be ordinary people that do not think by themselves and this situation must change. The world needs a revolution of young people that change it with critical and innovative ideas. That is when a teacher’s important mission comes into play. They should let their student think critically. They could do it by giving reflexive lessons and also promote activities that make them think, analyze, make judgement, organize ideas, and in which they can express their opinion. Debates and critical essays are critical teaching methods, among others. So, teachers should make their students think critically because it is a very important aspect which is nowadays censured by schools, and it is something essential that must be integrated not only in a classroom, but also in our everyday life.
Universidad Alberto Hurtado
Fernanda Inostroza Müller
30 th september, 2009
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