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Critical Thinking is More Important Than Ever. Here’s How to Get Better at It.
or, Welcome to the Internet, No One Will Be Your Guide
Critical Thinking Abilities Matter, More Than Ever
I teach critical thinking abilities to U.S. Air Force officers, and they hate it. It’s consistently one of the most universally-panned classes in our curriculum. Why is this?
Because they don’t believe it will help them solve their daily problems.
Yes, college-educated, professional military officers have not been trained to believe that the use of intellectual standards, elements of reasoning, and logic will help them in their daily work. They have been trained to believe that the information that will help them in their daily work exists solely in regulations, procedural manuals, and on-the-job experience. The concepts of inference, deduction, and logic are foreign to them. Consequently, they deem the lessons on critical thinking to be a waste of time.
“Why,” I often hear, “do I need to learn this? If I don’t know something, I just go ask somebody who does, or check online for info.”
What these intelligent, well-educated officers, and a large portion of America, fail to realize is that untested, un-examined…
