1) The ability to answer the question: "What is the real problem we are trying to solve?" in a way that gets to the heart of the matter and cuts through or avoids all the fluff.
2) Critical thinking, therefore, requires a crisp, unequivocal, conception of the word "problem." That's the key. Solve that and you solve the mystery of critical thinking. This is the thing that people don’t “get.”
The lack of critical thinking is the direct consequence of the lack of a crisp conception of what, exactly, constitutes a problem. For too many, a problem is something they disagree with, or they don't like, or which makes them angry, or which makes them unhappy. That’s not it. Not at all.
A problem, quite simply, is either an unmet objective or two objectives that conflict.
3) Critical thinking, therefore, rests on a clear understanding of the specific objective that is not being met, or the two objectives that are at cross purposes. Understand that, and you understand the heart of the matter. The objective should be stated as concretely as possible, AND it should act as a guide star by which all other decisions and plans can be made.
4) Critical thinking is a process – a disciplined method - one can use to identify the real problem to be solved.
With that said, there’s still an X factor; an additional ingredient that makes the rest possible. The X factor is sort of a sixth sense for zeroing in on the core, bedrock, principle that becomes the guiding objective which is either unmet, or which is at cross purposes with some other objective.
The good news is that it can be taught, and it can be learned – through repetition.
The method I learned was taught to me in college. We were given a 5 to 10 page paper describing a real life situation which we had to analyze. We had to write a report in which we wrote out, step-by-step, using the method we were taught, the results of our analysis. The reports invariably ended up being about 20 pages long. They’d be critiqued, and then we’d do another, and another, for an entire school year. And then, in the second year, in a follow-on course, we were the ones who did the critiques.
By the end of the course, everyone who took it was a better thinker. Of course, some were still better than others. Because in the end, critical thinking is like basketball: we can all improve our jump shot through practice, but we can’t all be Larry Bird. But every one of us was better at it than before we took the course.
The problem, the unmet objective, of our education system, is that our kids hardly, if ever, are shown how to shoot a jump shot. They're never even on the court.
From now on, in every "discussion" or argument you have, try to listen through all the fluff that the other person is saying and hear the problem they are trying to solve. Try to understand their unmet objective. What is it, really, that they are trying to achieve? If you think you understand what that is, repeat it back to them. See if you really do get it, and let them know you are listening. And likewise, try to articulate your own unmet objective as clearly as possible.
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It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
I think I know what it [critical thinking] is, But I am not absolutely sure what it is.
But I am not absolutely sure what it is. I think I know what it is.
I think 'critical thinking' is somewhat fuzzy. How do you measure it. By what measuring rule(s) do you use?
Our politicians are pretty good critical thinkers but they come from another world and dimension to mine. I don't understand where they are coming from and absolutely, most of the time, only think, I know where they are taking us.
The sad thing is that the question of whether Critical Thinkers are born or made is in some ways moot because our colleges seem to be doing quite poorly at fostering it.
From the Product Description for the book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses
are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, forty-five percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills - including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing - during their first two years of college. http://www.amazon.com/Academically-Adrift-Limited-Learning-Campuses/dp/0226028550
From a review of David Mamet’s new book:
Higher ed, he said, was an elaborate scheme to deprive young people of their freedom of thought. He compared four years of college to a lab experiment in which a rat is trained to pull a lever for a pellet of food. A student recites some bit of received and unexamined wisdom—“Thomas Jefferson: slave owner, adulterer, pull the lever”—and is rewarded with his pellet: a grade, a degree, and ultimately a lifelong membership in a tribe of people educated to see the world in the same way.
“If we identify every interaction as having a victim and an oppressor, and we get a pellet when we find the victims, we’re training ourselves not to see cause and effect,” he said. Wasn’t there, he went on, a “much more interesting . . . view of the world in which not everything can be reduced to victim and oppressor?”
Yeah, I do get long winded sometimes don't I? Apologies to anyone who can't get through it all, and thanks to anyone with the fortitude to undertake that slog. That particular subject (or the combination of the subjects of planning and critical thinking )as you can tell, is near and dear to my heart.
I did, in fact, have the pleasure of taking a real course in critical thinking in college. If I told you the title of the course or tried to explain the method I learned (yes, it is a method, in spite of my rant against processes) your eyes would glaze over.
I'd like to see something like it taught in every college. For those with whome it resonates, it may change their life (as it did mine), for others it will be just another course to get through. But, assuming nothing like that is taught now (which may be an incorrect assumption) I firmly believe that just the exposure to the ideas will make a difference.
I recently came across another fascinating idea that kinda goes to your point about critical thinkers making poor decisions. Check it out, here, for starters, and then google the author and his website for even more. http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-argumentative-theory
It's not about politics or elections, it's about human nature. It's just the way we're built. Politicians, or voters, being human, are equally susceptible to it.
The link takes you to an article about The Argumentative Theory of reasoning, which claims that we do not use reason to find the truth. We use it to (try to) win arguments. Big difference. It's a good theory, in my view, because, as the articles and papers illustrate, it explains a lot of behaviors we see in the real world that don't necessarily fit with what we think SHOULD be happening if we really were using reason to find the truty.
Anyway, if we do use reason to win arguments rather than to find the truth (which I believe we do) we tend to latch on to the strongest argument we can find that helps us win, but which may, in the end, lead to a poor decision.
Our brains are wired to be really good at seeing the faults within the arguments of others, and really bad at seeing the faults within the arguments of our own. It's all about defense, protection, survival, I'd venture, which all, in their own way, require is to "win" whatever contest we're engaged in.
But there's a difference, I think, between reason, and critical thinking. Critical thinking, I believe, can at least partially overcome some of the faults inherent to the way we use reason.
I think one way to at least partially overcome that is to learn and apply a critical thinking method. And another, as The Argumentative Theory (and others) is for us to think in groups, and rely on, and indeed use, each other to find the faults in our 'reasoning' such that together we have a better chance of finding the "right." answer.
But even with all of that, overcoming our wired-in defensiveness can be a difficult task indeed. Thus, our heated, passionate, political debates.
Few of these ideas are new, really, in the world of social science. Where they're new is in the mainstream culture, which, in my view, has some catching up to do. We're still behind the curve, still enamored with facts and statisticsa and data and, well, reason - the idea that the human mind works like a computer and can be influenced or controlled through all of the above. it doesn't and it can't - all of which, I think, have led us, collectively, to make some very poor decisions indeed. (Now I AM talking about politics.)
Looks kinda like another rant, huh? sorry (again)
__________________
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
I also believe teaching as you describe it is absolutely necessary.
The vast majority of people have got to follow a path, plan, be told, and be a good worker. Out of this, those who are different will stand out eventually as not being part of the team. And eventually, and probably painful, the oddity will be fired, promoted, given new tasks and duties.
Analagous to our Presidential selection. Sometimes we even select critical thinkers who have a predisposition in making poor decisions.
gosh, Winchester, When you rant, There's almost no end. Sorry for the initial precurser I'm going to have to read that rant in chapters.
I try to keep it simple. Don't believe everything you see, hear, feel, taste, think, or especially told.
I also think you are pretty much on target for what school does. But schooling is necessary to get the basics; Afterwhich, you can begin to look outward. Which drives DW and probably many women, absolutely more crazy.
I'm sorry for this extended rant, but critical thinking is a big issue for me in my real life. The lack of it is stunning. Much of what we do is based on "conventional wisdom" that is unwise, truisms that are untrue. We build entire business models on false presuppositions.
It is my personal experience that schools are terrible at teaching critical thinking. Basically, they don't do it.
In the business world, people go off to college or night school to get an MBA. They're taught "This is what managers do." These students come back to the workforce, do those things, and think they're managers.
They're not.
It's about accomplishing goals or missions in the big, fuzzy, messy world of humans, with all their idiosyncracies, faults, phobias, talents and shortcomings. It's not about performing functions or executing processes.
Here's an examaple from real life:
I work on schedules.
I use Microsoft Project A lot. The standard courses on MS Project, or, any planning and scheduling tool (e.g., Open Plan, Primavera, Artemis, etc.), teach all about Critical Path. Rules of thumb are "Every task must have a predecessor task, and every task must have a successor task. Because, if it does not have a predecessor then why can't we do it now? And if it does not have a successor then why do we need to do it at all? And once all the tasks are connected, the longest path through the program, such that a delay in any one of the tasks will cause a delay in the completion date of the program is the "critical path." So, we must focus our efforts on the tasks on the critical path.
It's pure BS. Over the years these hese concepts have probably done more harm than good. They've cost more than they've saved. They've caused more problems than they have ever solved.
Why? How?
Well, gee, let's see, off the top of my head.......
1) The big review meetings happen regardless of whether or not all of the predecessor tasks have been completed. Why? People. They make hotel reservations and buy airplane tickets to the beig meetings. They show up. all those predecessor tasks that were supposed to hapen before the meeting (draft design completed? draft system engineering master plan completed? draft test and evaluation master plan completed? prototype completed? prototype tested? blah blah blah) are almost never all done according to "the plan." So what do we do? We declare the plan "complete" as of that point, call the uncompleted tasks "action items," and move on, happy with our "success."
2) What happens if a test fails? Problem analysis, redesign, rebuild, retest. What are the chances the test will fail? 80/20? Fine, then the "plan" should have if/then branching in it, where, for planning purposes, we factor in the possibility that there's an 80% chance each test will be successful and the plan can move on, and a 20% chance the test will fail and we'll have to go into the longer path of problem analysis, redesign, etc. The "plan," in other words, should look like a flow chart, with if/then statements in it, and we should do Monte Carlo analysis on the plan. How many people have ever seen a plan like that? I thought so.
3) Political factors, budget factors, and natural factors are not in the plan (office politics or government politics, cost overruns or budget cuts because there's a new adminstration, tornadoes, hurricanes, or workshop accidents) but they can have a very real effect.
4) Probably the worst question in all of management is "according to the plan, where SHOULD we be?" If the plan is to drive accross country and you get a flat in Indianapolis that costs you a day of travel. What good is it to know that you SHOULD be in Springfield, Illinois? Exactly none. The real question to ask is, given where we are now and where we need to be, how do we need to adjust our plan to get there?
5) A well or poorly done design phase can have a great impact on the development phase. Design well done = development goes relatively smoothly. Sesign poorly done = develoment goes relatively badly. Is any of that in the plan? No.
6) Resources. Joe blow is our expert code writer in computer-user interfaces. He's currently working on task A, which is not on the critical path, and it is taking longer than expected. And since it is taking longer than expected he can't move on to task B, which IS on the critical path. Maybe that was considered in building the original plan, maybe not. But it doesn't matter, because, since we're so foolishly focused on the "critical path" that we didn't pay attenction to Joe Blow's schedule, so now we're screwed.
7) level of detail. I've seen it a thousand times. "If only we'd had one more level of detail in the plan then we would have know about this problem ahead of time and we would have been able to avoid it. So lets add that extra level of granularity so we can avoid this kind of thing in the future." Fine. You've just made geometric increase to the amount of data in your plan. If your plan has 100 tasks in it, and you break each one down to its subtasks - let's say there are 5 subtasks for each task - all of a sudden you now have 500 items to track, not just 100. And by the way, most plans have thousands of tasks to start with, not just hundreds.
8) Probability of success. If there's an 80% chance a task will finish on time, and that task is connected to another task which also has an 80% chance of finishing on time, then those two tasks, taken together, have 64% chance of completing on time. By about sixteen tasks the plan has about a 2% chance of finishing on time. How many tasks in your plan? The only thing we can say for sure about a plan is that it shows what will NOT happen. So what do we do? What is our management "process"? To try to force the one thing that we DO know to be true - what is happening in real life on the shop floor or among the software developers - into compliance with the one thing we know CAN'T be true, the plan. How silly is that? Oh, and by the way, typically, we made this supposed "plan" two years ago, before we starting bending real metal and writing real code; before we had the appreciation that we now have, two years later, of the real, nitty gritty, nuts and bolts, technical challenges of the program. But when we're "off track" from the plan do we think of that? Do we consider that maybe, possibly, the real "problem" is a plan that was totally unrealistic from the get go? Nah. Couldn't be. We must be doing something wrong now.
Our thinking (sic) is totally upside down.
9) Information overload. You say you want to add all this stuff - if/then statements, extra levels of granularity - in the plan? Fine. Who is going to gather all that information? Who is going to type it all into the plan? Who is going to keep it all up to date? Once a plan reaches a certain size, it is beyond the capacity of the human mind to grasp all of it at once. How will you ever know that it's all correct? Will the person who is maintaining it get the cooperation of everyone else in the program to always give him all the information he needs? (hint: That almost never happens in the real world.)
I'll tell you what happens in the real world; maintaining the plan becomes an end in itself. It becomes a poster child example of the tail wagging the dog.
Why? Not enough critical thinking.
PlannING is everything. The plan is nothing.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, or with the real world with real people in it.
PlannING is conversation. It is everyone getting together to create the plan. The "plan" is just where you take notes to document the results of the conversation so everyone has a reminder they can use to stay on mission. The plan communicates the director's, or the general's, intent. That's all. It is a guide star. Not a roadmap. Not a cookbook.
No guidestar can navigate. No cookbook can cook. No plan can ensure success on any program. It takes people to do that, focused on the director's intent.
Imagine this scenario: You're in a program management meeting. all the executives are there; the heads of all the departments. At the front of the room, projected on the screen, is a one page summary schedule. Somebody is standing up there, talking about the schedule. He points to the milestones one-by-one, they're all green - on schedule. Finally, he gets to one that is not green. That particular milestone is not on schedule.
What happens in the room? Think about it for a minute. (.....jeopardy music.....)
I'll tell you what happens. All the heads in the room turn and face the guy who is responsible for that task, asking, Well? What's the problem? Now that guy has to talk about the stuff he's responsible for. The conversation, the plannING has started.
Once those heads turn, the plan has served its purpose. It is done. You dont' need it any more. The lesson? Keep it simple, stupid.
Do we teach any of this sort of thing in Business School, or at least in classes on planning and scheduling?
I once worked for an Army Colonel who was put in charge of planning (poor guy.) It was easy to see why he was a Colonel. He "get's it," and quickly. He was a born critical thinker. He was in his new position of head of planning for only a matter of weeks, when he observed (of the people he worked for; i.e., "management.") "These people are crazy! You know what they want? They want one button (i.e., the "Critical Path" calculation) that says "Here are all of your problems," and they want another button that says, "And here are all of your solutions."
We treat facts, data, logic, measurement, statistics, critical path, etc., etc., etc., as if they are the the holy grail of the business world; we hold them up as the gods of business. Well they're not. They're false gods.
But we're so enamored of them; we're so arrogantly self-impressed with our own ability to "reason" that we stop reasoning and hand our fate over to methods and processes and information that misses the entire point. Not only do we miss the forest for the trees, or the mission for the process, we become oblivious to the fact that there even is a forest (or a mission, or a goal.)
But what do our schools teach? Data. Statistics. Measurement. Process. Critical path. Total Quality Management. ISO 9000. Hooey.
What do our schools NOT teach? Critical thinking. Question the presuppositions. Ask, what problem are we REALLY trying to solve?
Tom Peters had it right all those years ago in his book "Thriving on Chaos." What problem are we REALLY trying to solve? Get on with it.
The problem, usually, is not that there was not enough data. In fact, too much data is the cause of the problem.
The problem, usually, is either unmet objectives or conflicting objectives. People losing track of what they're really trying to accomplish, or working at cross purposes. Most of that focus on data and processes and certifications is a distraction.
Problems with schedules are really just symptoms. Focusing on the "critical path" is like treating a sinus infection by wiping your nose.
The real problems are elsewhere. Somebody somewhere has "lost the bubble," or the business practices, the processes, are asking people to focus on the wrong things. But we don't THINK. We just assume.
We don't ask, "What is the problem we're trying to solve? What need is not being met? What objective has not been satisfied? Which objectives are at cross purposes?" We just assume the problem is "The Data," or "The Process." We say "If only the schedule had more data in it then we would have known." And we add more data, and we dig ourselves further into the hole.
We need to stop digging.
What we need to teach in schools is how to question the presuppostions; how to identify and isolate the "problem." How to work with PEOPLE, not processes of measurement or databases full of statistics.
{End Rant}
I feel much better. Thank you.
-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 28th of June 2011 08:41:53 AM
__________________
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
Critical thinking is like leadership, or anything else, really.
The cream of the crop are born with a special talent.
But, as in athletics, study and practice can improve anyone.
The best of the best combine the two. They are students of the game. They enhance their inherent talent through diligent study and practice. And more practice.
See Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell for examples of people who study and practice their "game" - in whatever field - to the point that they develop an almost spooky "sixth sense" of the facts, methods, and practices of it.
__________________
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” – Mark Twain
I'm going to have to read that rant in chapters.
