Upon considerable reflection, I have come to the painful conclusion that teaching critical thinking was a waste of effort. I don’t now think that it can be taught to someone. Either one is or isn’t a critical thinker from the start, at birth. It is a natural characteristic not a learned one. Awareness of critical thinking as a process of thought is useful to those who are as it gives them an appropriate label to their way of thinking and they did well in courses designed around that encouraging them to go even further. To those who are not critical thinkers it becomes a hated thing, an impediment to their memorizing and regurgitating of facts and figures for which they are most adept, were once held in high regard, but had fallen on hard times educationally as critical thinking emerged. Critical thinking arose as we moved away from rote learning and has been a pivotal part of our mandated curriculum for as long as I can remember as a teacher. All teachers in Alberta taught it, but I see, after many generations of students, little evidence of it in life, in elections, in responses to the inane things politicians say, to how society works. 

The students who are critical thinkers already are by nature, they constantly question rules and authority and are often considered to be unruly and non-conformist as they demand rational clarification for the demands asked of them. They question ideas, thoughts and facts. These students who tend to be internally and rationally motivated have no issue changing theories and facts based on new data that proves changes necessary. They are confident in themselves, self assured, prefer to find out things for themselves and are quick to point out logical flaws in explanations. These students gravitate to ambiguous situations and questions and draw from experience how to deal with new situations, thoughts and experiences. These students are deep thinkers, concerned with how we got here, often very empathetic of others, concerned for fairness, egalitarian principles and care deeply about our collective future. And I think these students represent roughly perhaps one quarter of the population.

I well remember most of the students complaining about having ‘to do’ critical thinking. “Just tell me the answer to the question! Why do I have to figure this out? Why do I have to explain it?” Those kids can’t handle ambiguity, uncertainty and doubt, they are not comfortable enough in their own skin and always look outward for answers, support and direction, and blame, if things go wrong. These students tend to be more emotionally motivated and outwardly  guided and will unquestionably accept most any rule shown to them. They cling to rules as their guide posts of how to navigate the world, becoming upset if unanticipated events occur leading to ambiguity, and any sense of loss of direction or advantage. They hang on to traditional ‘we always did it this way before’ ways and reasons regardless whether unjust and outdated or not. These students also didn’t care how or why these rules were generated, they were simply to be followed, sort of. To help them ‘do’ critical thinking we made it formulaic in both multiple choice exams and essay writing. Both of which nullifies the true broad, creative, divergent, spirit of critical thinking. These hard sell critical thinking students are similarly perhaps about one quarter of the population.

The center of the population are sprinkled between critical thinkers and the none critical thinkers to varying degrees. This great clump in the center are only critical thinkers in areas they care about and seek direction for everything else. They are a tense lot, unsure which way to run in their daily lives, they are the target for support by the groups on either side of them, but lacking courage, most err on the side of what they believe is caution and side most often with the traditionalist non-thinkers. Easily persuaded by what was and leery of the uncertainty of what may be and a potential loss of any advantage accrued over time, these folks are loath to change anything unless motivated enough by disaster leaving them no alternative.

When I think this way, then Alberta makes total sense.