kid definition of critical thinking

6 Ways to Teach Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is an essential cognitive process that involves actively analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing information to form reasoned judgments and solve problems. John Dewey defined reflective thinking as the careful and deliberate determination of whether to accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim.

Critical thinking skills include conceptualization, analysis, evaluation, reasoning, synthesis, problem-solving, and openness to new ideas, fostering the ability to discern misinformation, eliminate bias, think independently, and make informed decisions. Thinking critically is vital for personal growth and career advancement. Find out how to develop and teach critical thinking to both adults and children.

Table of Contents

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is a set of skills and habits of mind to go beyond simply accepting information or ideas, but instead analyze the issue, evaluate information, and reason critically to make a conclusion or solve a problem. Thinking critically includes making creative connections between ideas from different disciplines.

American philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey (1859–1952) called this “reflective thinking”. Dewey defined critical thinking as active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge. It involves actively subjecting ideas to critical scrutiny rather than passively accepting their face value.

What are critical thinking skills?

Here are 7 core critical thinking skills.

• Conceptualize : Form abstract ideas and mental models that accurately represent complex concepts.
• Analyze : Break down information into components and relationships to uncover patterns, principles, and deeper meanings.
• Evaluate : Assess the credibility, accuracy, quality, strength, methodologies, and relevance of claims or evidence using logical standards to judge the validity or significance of the information.
• Reason : Applying logical thinking to conclude from facts or evidence.
• Synthesize : Combining different ideas, findings, or information to form a coherent whole or a new perspective.
• Solve problems : Identifying solutions to issues through logical analysis and creative thinking.
• Open to other possibilities : Being willing to consider alternative solutions, ideas, or viewpoints beyond the initial scope.

Why is critical thinking important?

Critical thinking is an important part of cognitive development for the following 8 reasons.

• Discern misinformation : Critical thinking helps us separate facts from opinions, spot flawed arguments, and avoid falling for inaccurate information.
• Identify and eliminate prejudice : It allows us to recognize societal biases and close-mindedness.
• Think independently : It enables us to develop rational viewpoints rather than blindly accepting claims, mainstream narratives, or fads. It also helps children form their own opinions, make wise decisions, and resist peer pressure.
• Make good decisions : It enables logical thinking for better judgment and making rational decisions, not influenced by emotions.
• Communicate clearly : It lets us understand others’ perspectives and improve communication.
• Get better solutions : It broadens our thought process and enables good problem-solving to achieve the best solutions to challenges.
• Cultivate open-mindedness and creativity : It spurs intellectual curiosity to explore new paradigms.
• Grow skills set : It facilitates wiser, more informed choices that affect personal growth, career advancement, and positive relationships.

Why is critical thinking hard to teach?

Critical thinking is hard to teach because to think critically on a topic, deep knowledge about a subject is required to apply logic. Therefore, critical thinking skills are hard to teach by itself. The analytical reasoning skills learned on one topic don’t transfer quickly to another domain.

What are examples of critical thinking?

Here are examples of critical thinking in real life.

• Solving a math problem : Breaking down complex math problems into smaller parts to understand and solve them step by step.
• Deciding on a book for a report : Reading summaries and reviews to select a book that fits the assignment criteria and personal interest.
• Resolving a dispute with a friend : Listening to each other’s perspectives, identifying the problem, and coming up with a fair solution together.
• Navigating social media safely : Assessing the credibility of online information and the safety of sharing personal data.
• Saving up for a toy : Comparing prices, setting a realistic goal, budgeting allowance money, and resisting impulse buys that derail the plan.
• Figuring out a new bike route : Studying maps for safe streets, estimating distances, choosing the most efficient way, and accounting for hills and traffic.
• Analyzing the motive of a storybook villain : Looking at their actions closely to infer their motivations and thinking through alternative perspectives.

How to develop critical thinking

To develop critical thinking, here are 10 ways to practice.

• Ask probing questions : Ask “why”, “how”, “what if” to deeply understand issues and reveal assumptions.
• Examine evidence objectively : Analyze information’s relevance, credibility, and adequacy.
• Consider different viewpoints : Think through other valid viewpoints that may differ from your own.
• Identify and challenge assumptions : Don’t just accept claims at face value.
• Analyze arguments : Break down arguments and claims into premises and conclusions, and look for logical fallacies.
• Apply reasoned analysis : Base conclusions on logical reasoning and evidence rather than emotion or anecdotes.
• Seek clarity : Ask for explanations of unfamiliar terms and avoid ambiguous claims.
• Discuss ideas : Share your ideas with others to gain insights and refine your thought processes.
• Debate respectfully : Engage in discussions with those who disagree thoughtfully and respectfully.
• Reflect on your thoughts and decisions : Question your thoughts and conclusions to avoid jumping to conclusions.

How to teach critical thinking to a child

To teach critical thinking to a child, encourage them to apply deeper thinking in any situation that requires decision-making in daily life. Here are 6 tips on teaching critical thinking.

• Start early and explain everything : Young children often ask lots of questions. Instead of saying, “That’s how it’s supposed to be,” explain things to them as much as possible from an early age. When children are taught from a young age how to ask different types of questions and formulate judgments using objective evidence and logical analysis, they grow up confident in their ability to question assumptions and reason with logic rather than emotions. When you can’t answer specific questions, you can say, “That’s a good question, and I want to know the answer, too!”
• Prioritize reasoned rules over blind obedience : Authoritarian discipline stifles critical thinking, as demonstrated by psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1963 study titled “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” In the study, most subjects, under authoritative orders, would administer electric shocks to a stranger and escalate to potentially lethal levels without questioning the authority. Avoid using “because I said so.” Encourage children to inquire, discuss, and participate in rule-making. Help them understand the reasons behind rules to foster critical thinking. Allow children to question and discuss the legitimacy of what we say.
• Encourage problem-solving activities : Encourage your child to solve puzzles, play strategy games, or take on complex problems to strengthen their analytical skills.
• Foster curiosity : Thinking critically means being willing to have your views challenged by new information and different perspectives. Curiosity drives children to explore and question the world around them, challenging assumptions and leading to a deeper understanding of complex concepts.
• Teach open-mindedness : Keeping an open mind and flexible thinking when approaching a new problem is essential in critical thinking. Suggest different points of view, alternative explanations, or solutions to problems. Encourage children to solve problems in new ways and connect different ideas from other domains to strengthen their analytical thinking skills.
• Explain the difference between correlation and causation : One of the biggest impediments to logical reasoning is the confusion between correlation and causation. When two things happen together, they are correlated, but it doesn’t necessarily mean one causes the other. We don’t know whether it’s causation or correlation unless we have more information to prove that.

References For Critical Thinking

• 1. Willingham DT. Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? Arts Education Policy Review . Published online March 2008:21-32. doi:https://doi.org/10.3200/aepr.109.4.21-32
• 2. Quinn V. Critical Thinking in Young Minds . Routledge; 2018. doi:https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429445323
• 3. Hess RD, McDevitt TM. Some Cognitive Consequences of Maternal Intervention Techniques: A Longitudinal Study. Child Development . Published online December 1984:2017. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/1129776
• 4. Slater M, Antley A, Davison A, et al. A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments. Rustichini A, ed. PLoS ONE . Published online December 20, 2006:e39. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000039
• 5. Rimiene V. Assessing and Developing Students’ Critical Thinking. Psychology Learning & Teaching . Published online March 2002:17-22. doi:https://doi.org/10.2304/plat.2002.2.1.17
• 6. Dyche L, Epstein RM. Curiosity and medical education. Medical Education . Published online June 7, 2011:663-668. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.03944.x
• 7. Schwartz S. The fallacy of the ecological fallacy: the potential misuse of a concept and the consequences. Am J Public Health . Published online May 1994:819-824. doi:https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.84.5.819

Disclaimer: The content of this article is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for medical concerns.

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How to explain critical thinking to a child.

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Explaining critical thinking to my preschooler by using fancy words and a vocabulary way out of his reach would only cause us both to tear our hair out.

And I might even have a tantrum.

After all, the definition of critical thinking can be complicated for even an adult to understand: It has to do with the process of observing, applying and evaluating information.

In other words, critical thinking is how you learn from interpreting and experiencing the world around you.

Although the terminology seems daunting at first, there are some simple techniques you can use as an explanation of critical thinking skills to your kiddo who needs these abilities to interpret this fast-paced world.

As a teacher, mother, and researcher, I have learned a few ways to trick your tyke into understanding and practicing critical thinking for kids.

So if you’ve been wondering how to explain critical thinking to a child, here are a few techniques that might keep you both sane.

Encourage free play

We live in an age with so many distractions that sometimes we forget how important it is for our kids just to play.

When a child plays on her own, she will face some challenges that she will have to overcome.

For example, my son remains obsessed with his toy cars and trains. Sometimes a wheel falls off, or the train doesn’t connect right away, and that little boy gets angrier than a hungry rhino.

He’ll expect me to fix it immediately, but most of the time (we all have our moments of giving in, and I am no saint), I tell him that this is his independent playtime, and he must try to figure it out on his own.

I’m not trying to be harsh, but my son would have me putting those trains together every two seconds if I didn’t set some boundaries.

Sorry kiddo, but Mommy has some other things to do.

If he still struggles after a couple of attempts, then I will show him how to complete the task, then tell him to try again next time.

Free play provides one example of how to explain critical thinking to a child by problem-solving a real-life conflict.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can also set up real-life scenarios. These scenarios can be as basic as playing the old-school version of house.

Your child can even retrieve some pots and pans, and in addition to banging on them, pretend to be a cook.

Your kid could also bust out that fake toolset that grandma got him for Christmas.

For more about this topic, check out one of my other posts: 8 Critical Thinking Activities for Preschoolers that Encourage Imagination.

Pro Tip: Help Your Child Become Better at Critical Thinking

Enroll your child for the Atlas Mission and let your child play with this award-winning educational program. Your child will become better at critical thinking without even realizing it!

Hypothesize: ask questions and brainstorm possibilities

Hypothesize is a big word, but if we break it down, this term just involves asking questions and brainstorming possibilities.

I find myself doing this with my daredevil son daily, mostly by accident: What would happen if you climbed up then stood on that tall stool?

How will you feel after eating a whole bag of chips?

After I ask these questions, my son does take a second to think about the answers.

Does he always come up with the right conclusion? No. But that’s okay. He’s at least evaluating the situation and learning from his own unique experiences.

You can hypothesize with your child in a way that works for you.

Maybe your kid loves sports: You could ask her what would happen if you kicked the ball hard against the tree? What would happen if you change your batting stance? And so on.

Asking questions and forming hypotheses are simple ways to explain critical thinking to a child.

Think about thinking – get down with metacognition

When I taught, the word metacognition  was thrown around a lot during professional development classes.

Don’t worry – all this term means is thinking about thinking.

Parents and children alike are usually running around like crazy chickens with their heads cut off.

We cram in all these activities, and we’re on a mission to do so much. So often, we rarely stop and think about thinking.

Pick a subject – any subject – and you can use metacognition.

For this example, let’s say your child is learning his ABCs. Talk to him about strategies that may work to fulfill that goal.

Perhaps you ask Little Johnny what helps you to remember your ABCs? And he responds, “I love the song.”

He might also say that he likes learning chunks of the song at a time because he can only remember a few letters at a time.

Or, as my son told me, read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom over and over and over again.

Bless his heart, and if only there were more hours in a day.

Asking your child about learning strategies that work for your child offers insights that are valuable for both of you.

Plus, there have been studies on metacognition that proves that when you think about thinking, you retain more information. Visit this site for more details on this concept.

Explaining critical thinking to a preschooler and a 12-year-old is very different because they both have different interests and unique mental capacities.

But no matter what their age, they can always learn something from play, hypothesizing, and thinking about thinking.

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Amanda Clark creates educational content for the Atlas Mission . She is a work-at-home mom with two awesome sons that keep her on her toes. She has written four books of poetry, loves technology, juggling pins, and freelance writing.

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5 Critical Thinking Skills Every Kid Needs To Learn (And How To Teach Them)

Teach them to thoughtfully question the world around them.

Little kids love to ask questions. “Why is the sky blue?” “Where does the sun go at night?” Their innate curiosity helps them learn more about the world, and it’s key to their development. As they grow older, it’s important to encourage them to keep asking questions and to teach them the right kinds of questions to ask. We call these “critical thinking skills,” and they help kids become thoughtful adults who are able to make informed decisions as they grow older.

What is critical thinking?

Critical thinking allows us to examine a subject and develop an informed opinion about it. First, we need to be able to simply understand the information, then we build on that by analyzing, comparing, evaluating, reflecting, and more. Critical thinking is about asking questions, then looking closely at the answers to form conclusions that are backed by provable facts, not just “gut feelings” and opinion.

Critical thinkers tend to question everything, and that can drive teachers and parents a little crazy. The temptation to reply, “Because I said so!” is strong, but when you can, try to provide the reasons behind your answers. We want to raise children who take an active role in the world around them and who nurture curiosity throughout their entire lives.

Key Critical Thinking Skills

So, what are critical thinking skills? There’s no official list, but many people use Bloom’s Taxonomy to help lay out the skills kids should develop as they grow up.

Source: Vanderbilt University

Bloom’s Taxonomy is laid out as a pyramid, with foundational skills at the bottom providing a base for more advanced skills higher up. The lowest phase, “Remember,” doesn’t require much critical thinking. These are the skills kids use when they memorize math facts or world capitals or practice their spelling words. Critical thinking doesn’t begin to creep in until the next steps.

Understanding requires more than memorization. It’s the difference between a child reciting by rote “one times four is four, two times four is eight, three times four is twelve,” versus recognizing that multiplication is the same as adding a number to itself a certain number of times. Schools focus more these days on understanding concepts than they used to; pure memorization has its place, but when a student understands the concept behind something, they can then move on to the next phase.

Application opens up whole worlds to students. Once you realize you can use a concept you’ve already mastered and apply it to other examples, you’ve expanded your learning exponentially. It’s easy to see this in math or science, but it works in all subjects. Kids may memorize sight words to speed up their reading mastery, but it’s learning to apply phonics and other reading skills that allows them to tackle any new word that comes their way.

Analysis is the real leap into advanced critical thinking for most kids. When we analyze something, we don’t take it at face value. Analysis requires us to find facts that stand up to inquiry, even if we don’t like what those facts might mean. We put aside personal feelings or beliefs and explore, examine, research, compare and contrast, draw correlations, organize, experiment, and so much more. We learn to identify primary sources for information, and check into the validity of those sources. Analysis is a skill successful adults must use every day, so it’s something we must help kids learn as early as possible.

Almost at the top of Bloom’s pyramid, evaluation skills let us synthesize all the information we’ve learned, understood, applied, and analyzed, and to use it to support our opinions and decisions. Now we can reflect on the data we’ve gathered and use it to make choices, cast votes, or offer informed opinions. We can evaluate the statements of others too, using these same skills. True evaluation requires us to put aside our own biases and accept that there may be other valid points of view, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them.

In the final phase, we use every one of those previous skills to create something new. This could be a proposal, an essay, a theory, a plan—anything a person assembles that’s unique.

Note: Bloom’s original taxonomy included “synthesis” as opposed to “create,” and it was located between “apply” and “evaluate.” When you synthesize, you put various parts of different ideas together to form a new whole. In 2001, a group of cognitive psychologists removed that term from the taxonomy , replacing it with “create,” but it’s part of the same concept.

How To Teach Critical Thinking

Using critical thinking in your own life is vital, but passing it along to the next generation is just as important. Be sure to focus on analyzing and evaluating, two multifaceted sets of skills that take lots and lots of practice. Start with these 10 Tips for Teaching Kids To Be Awesome Critical Thinkers . Then try these critical thinking activities and games. Finally, try to incorporate some of these 100+ Critical Thinking Questions for Students into your lessons. They’ll help your students develop the skills they need to navigate a world full of conflicting facts and provocative opinions.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

This classic Sesame Street activity is terrific for introducing the ideas of classifying, sorting, and finding relationships. All you need are several different objects (or pictures of objects). Lay them out in front of students, and ask them to decide which one doesn’t belong to the group. Let them be creative: The answer they come up with might not be the one you envisioned, and that’s OK!

The Answer Is …

Post an “answer” and ask kids to come up with the question. For instance, if you’re reading the book Charlotte’s Web , the answer might be “Templeton.” Students could say, “Who helped save Wilbur even though he didn’t really like him?” or “What’s the name of the rat that lived in the barn?” Backwards thinking encourages creativity and requires a good understanding of the subject matter.

Forced Analogies

Practice making connections and seeing relationships with this fun game. Kids write four random words in the corners of a Frayer Model and one more in the middle. The challenge? To link the center word to one of the others by making an analogy. The more far out the analogies, the better!

Learn more: Forced Analogies at The Owl Teacher

Primary Sources

Tired of hearing “I found it on Wikipedia!” when you ask kids where they got their answer? It’s time to take a closer look at primary sources. Show students how to follow a fact back to its original source, whether online or in print. We’ve got 10 terrific American history–based primary source activities to try here.

Science Experiments

Hands-on science experiments and STEM challenges are a surefire way to engage students, and they involve all sorts of critical thinking skills. We’ve got hundreds of experiment ideas for all ages on our STEM pages , starting with 50 Stem Activities To Help Kids Think Outside the Box .

Not the Answer

Multiple-choice questions can be a great way to work on critical thinking. Turn the questions into discussions, asking kids to eliminate wrong answers one by one. This gives them practice analyzing and evaluating, allowing them to make considered choices.

Learn more: Teaching in the Fast Lane

Correlation Tic-Tac-Toe

Here’s a fun way to work on correlation, which is a part of analysis. Show kids a 3 x 3 grid with nine pictures, and ask them to find a way to link three in a row together to get tic-tac-toe. For instance, in the pictures above, you might link together the cracked ground, the landslide, and the tsunami as things that might happen after an earthquake. Take things a step further and discuss the fact that there are other ways those things might have happened (a landslide can be caused by heavy rain, for instance), so correlation doesn’t necessarily prove causation.

Learn more: Critical Thinking Tic-Tac-Toe at The Owl Teacher

Inventions That Changed the World

Explore the chain of cause and effect with this fun thought exercise. Start it off by asking one student to name an invention they believe changed the world. Each student then follows by explaining an effect that invention had on the world and their own lives. Challenge each student to come up with something different.

Learn more: Teaching With a Mountain View

Critical Thinking Games

There are so many board games that help kids learn to question, analyze, examine, make judgments, and more. In fact, pretty much any game that doesn’t leave things entirely up to chance (Sorry, Candy Land) requires players to use critical thinking skills. See one teacher’s favorites at the link below.

Learn more: Miss DeCarbo

This is one of those classic critical thinking activities that really prepares kids for the real world. Assign a topic (or let them choose one). Then give kids time to do some research to find good sources that support their point of view. Finally, let the debate begin! Check out 100 Middle School Debate Topics , 100 High School Debate Topics , and 60 Funny Debate Topics for Kids of All Ages .

How do you teach critical thinking skills in your classroom? Come share your ideas and ask for advice in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, check out 38 simple ways to integrate social-emotional learning throughout the day ..

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Critical thinking: what it is, how it is formed and how it helps children

What is critical thinking.

• How does crithical thinking develop?

Why is critical thinking important?

How does critical thinking develop?

Critical thinking is one of the most important skills children will need in the future. As society changes and the access to information is unlimited, children need to be able to do more than just repeat what they hear or read. They need to be able to make sense of information, analyse, compare, evaluate and come to conclusions. Most of the time in school, children learn by repeating either what the teacher says or what is written in the textbooks. In many educational institutions, active learning is completely lacking. So children learn to follow certain steps, which they think are the right ones, in a certain order, so that they get the right answer and therefore a grade or mark. Children learn more about how to memorise information rather than how to think.

Parents play an important role in developing critical thinking. Although it is often difficult to teach critical thinking, parents can help children to form critical thinking skills and to be always curious, to seek more information about specific topics in order to solve problems or situations they face. 

Activities that help stimulate children's critical thinking

• Young children should be encouraged to ask questions . Stimulating young children's curiosity is one of the best ways to teach them to think critically. "Why?" is one of the most common questions children ask. The answer to this question should not be a fixed one ('it must be so') but a starting point for a wide-ranging discussion, with arguments and conclusions.
• It is recommended that children be challenged. Children are constantly learning through repetition, mistakes and experimentation. Playing is an excellent activity that helps young children to think. Moreover, playing is the foundation of critical thinking. That's why children should be challenged to try as many stimulating activities as possible and parents should not limit their freedom. Even if it is harder for some children to solve certain games, they should be allowed to try and think up solutions for themselves.
• It is helpful for children's development to learn to solve problems. To help them develop critical thinking skills, parents can teach young children to find explanations and alternative solutions to different situations. It is satisfying for both adults and children to find the right answer, but in many cases some problems or situations in everyday life may have more than one solution. When children consider more than one solution, they can become more flexible in their thinking.
• Building hypotheses is another activity that can bring many benefits to children. Pausing play for a few moments to encourage your child to develop hypotheses is a critical thinking exercise that helps develop this essential life skill. Simple questions such as "If we do this, what do you think will happen?" during playtime will help young children.
• It is a good idea to expose young children to as many situations as possible. Interacting with other people, discovering unfamiliar places and engaging in new activities are important for children's development. The more they are exposed to different situations, the more open and curious children will learn to look at the world.

Encouraging children to ask questions, stimulating them through engaging discussions and guiding them to discover as many alternatives as possible contributes to the development of critical thinking from an early age.

Activities that discourage critical thinking in children

Not having access to information is one of the reasons why some children do not develop critical thinking skills. However, there are many practices that are actually unhelpful in developing logical thinking:

• Children don't know why they have certain boundaries. Both parents and teachers should give children reasons when they ask them to do things in a certain way. Asking children to simply follow certain information and obey adults' orders is a way of discouraging the development of critical thinking.
• Children are punished if they ask uncomfortable questions. Curiosity is defining for children, and when it is not allowed to run free, young children can have cognitive problems.
• Children are offended. The answers to the problems children face may be obvious to adults as life experience speaks for itself. The fact that parents can more easily think of answers should not influence the child's ability to analyse. Children should therefore be left to work out the answers for themselves and should not be offended if the process takes longer.
• Children are discouraged. When they have an idea or a point of view about a problem or situation, children should be encouraged to follow their own beliefs. If they are discouraged from engaging in different activities or expressing certain views, young children will eventually stop expressing themselves, which will affect their ability to think critically.
• Children come into contact with the ideas and assumptions of others. Developing critical thinking refers to children's ability to form their own ideas and find the best solutions. When young children are forced to read and retain certain information without being given the opportunity to analyse and question it, they may find it difficult to express their own beliefs in the future.

Therefore, children should not be restricted in their ability to think and express themselves and should be allowed to express themselves freely, without feeling any pressure.

Some of the benefits of critical thinking are:

• Developing leadership skills. A leader leads by example and one of the tools they need to excel is critical thinking.
• The ability to have a clear vision on certain issues. People who have the ability to think critically have a clearer view of the situations they are put in, which allows them to see the essence of a problem and find solutions to it more easily.
• Ability to find ways out of difficult situations. Critical thinking involves analysing problems and finding solutions. A critical thinker sees possibilities in problems, thus identifying ways out of any difficult situation, no matter how difficult it seems at first.
• Ability to make good decisions. People who think critically deal with problems as they arise, thanks to their ability to find different angles to approach and solve them. Ultimately, they make the right decisions.
• Developing creativity. When a person thinks critically, they don't focus on a particular idea or solution. Critical thinking involves a lot of ideas from which to select the one that best fits the needs of the moment.
• Developing persuasive communication. As they develop critical thinking skills, young children learn how to construct logical arguments with which they can be persuasive.

In conclusion, critical thinking is a skill that children should develop as soon as possible, as it will benefit them throughout their lives, and parents and teachers play an important role in this process. Kinderpedia, the comprehensive communication and management platform for schools and kindergartens, supports school-family dialogue, facilitates feedback and strengthens the school community. Children learn in a friendly environment based on listening, empathy, respect and trust, which encourages the development of critical thinking.

How Kinderpedia supports active learning and the transition to a modern classroom

https://www.parentingforbrain.com/critical-thinking-for-kids/#

https://www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/developing-critical-thinking-skills-in-children

https://www.verywellfamily.com/how-to-teach-your-child-to-be-a-critical-thinker-5190765

https://parentingscience.com/teaching-critical-thinking/

https://www.theschoolrun.com/how-help-your-child-develop-critical-thinking-skills

https://www.greenchildmagazine.com/think-it-through-helping-your-child-develop-critical-thinking-skills/

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_importance_of_critical_thinking_for_young_children

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-thinking/history.html

https://www.theblacksheep.community/benefits-of-critical-thinking/

https://criticalthinkingacademy.net/index.php/ct/benefits-of-critical-thinking#

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Critical thinking is a 21st-century essential — here’s how to help kids learn it

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If we want children to thrive in our complicated world, we need to teach them how to think, says educator Brian Oshiro. And we can do it with 4 simple questions.

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

We all want the young people in our lives to thrive, but there’s no clear consensus about what will best put them on the path to future success. Should every child be taught to code? Attain fluency in Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi and English?

Those are great, but they’re not enough, says educator and teacher trainer Brian Oshiro . If we want our children to have flexible minds that can readily absorb new information and respond to complex problems, he says, we need to develop their critical thinking skills.

In adult life, “we all have to deal with questions that are a lot more complicated than those found on a multiple-choice test,” he says in a TEDxXiguan talk. “We need to give students an opportunity to grapple with questions that don’t necessarily have one correct answer. This is more realistic of the types of situations that they’re likely to face when they get outside the classroom.”

How can we encourage kids to think critically from an early age? Through an activity that every child is already an expert at — asking questions.

1. Go beyond “what?” — and ask “how?” and “why?”

Let’s say your child is learning about climate change in school. Their teacher may ask them a question like “What are the main causes of climate change?” Oshiro says there are two problems with this question — it can be answered with a quick web search, and being able to answer it gives people a false sense of security; it makes them feel like they know a topic, but their knowledge is superficial.

At home, prompt your kid to answer questions such as “ How exactly does X cause climate change?” and “ Why should we worry about it?” To answer, they’ll need to go beyond the bare facts and really think about a subject.

Other great questions: “ How will climate change affect where we live?” or “ Why should our town in particular worry about climate change?” Localizing questions gives kids, says Oshiro, “an opportunity to connect whatever knowledge they have to something personal in their lives.”

2. Follow it up with “How do you know this?”

Oshiro says, “They have to provide some sort of evidence and be able to defend their answer against some logical attack.” Answering this question requires kids to reflect on their previous statements and assess where they’re getting their information from.

3. Prompt them to think about how their perspective may differ from other people’s.

Ask a question like “How will climate change affect people living in X country or X city?” or “Why should people living in X country or X city worry about it?” Kids will be pushed to think about the priorities and concerns of others, says Oshiro, and to try to understand their perspectives — essential elements of creative problem-solving.

4. Finally, ask them how to solve this problem.

But be sure to focus the question. For example, rather than ask “How can we solve climate change?” — which is too big for anyone to wrap their mind around — ask “How could we address and solve cause X of climate change?” Answering this question will require kids to synthesize their knowledge. Nudge them to come up with a variety of approaches: What scientific solution could address cause X? What’s a financial solution? Political solution?

You can start this project any time on any topic; you don’t have to be an expert on what your kids are studying. This is about teaching them to think for themselves. Your role is to direct their questions, listen and respond. Meanwhile, your kids “have to think about how they’re going to put this into digestible pieces for you to understand it,” says Oshiro. “It’s a great way to consolidate learning.”

Critical thinking isn’t just for the young, of course. He says, “If you’re a lifelong learner, ask yourself these types of questions in order to test your assumptions about what you think you already know.” As he adds, “We can all improve and support critical thinking by asking a few extra questions each day.”

Watch his TEDxXiguan talk now:

About the author

Mary Halton is a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. You can find her on Twitter at @maryhalton

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Think About It: Critical Thinking

Use these tips to encourage your child's critical thinking skills..

Critical thinking has become a buzzword in education. In the past, the emphasis in classrooms has been on imparting information and content — the times tables or the capitals of the United States, for example. In recent years, however, there's been a shift toward teaching critical thinking , a skill that elevates thinking beyond memorization into the realm of analysis and logic.

Put another way, critical thinking is about knowing how to think, not what to think. Teachers use a number of techniques to help students learn critical thinking, starting as early as kindergarten and ramping up especially in 2nd grade and beyond. Below are a few of the methods educators employ; you can try them at home to help your child become a critical thinker.

• Critical thinking: Ask open-ended questions. Asking questions that don't have one right answer encourages children to respond creatively without being afraid of giving the wrong answer.
• Critical thinking: Categorize and classify. Classification plays an important role in critical thinking because it requires identification and sorting according to a rule, or set of rules, that kids must discover, understand, and apply. If you play classification games at home, be sure to follow up the activity with questions about the similarities and differences between the groups. You can sort everything from dirty laundry to Legos to produce to doll clothes to promote critical thinking.
• Critical thinking: Work in groups. In a group setting, students are exposed to the thought processes of their peers. Thus, they can begin to understand how others think and that there are multiple ways of approaching problems — not just one correct way.
• Critical thinking: Make decisions. Help your child consider pros and cons, but don't be afraid to let her make a wrong choice. Then evaluate the decision later. Ask your child, "How do you feel about your decision? What would you do differently next time?"
• Critical thinking: Find patterns. Whatever you're doing, whether it's going to the park or watching television, encourage your child to look for patterns or make connections for critcal thinking practice. For example, relate a favorite television show to a real-life situation. Or, while driving in the car, have your child identify different shapes in roads signs and in the windows and roofs of passing houses. 

It might be tempting to pass off the critical thinking buzz as just another fad in education. However, most teachers disagree. It's still important for your child to know his multiplication tables, but it's just as vital for him to know how and when to use them.

Thinking about thinking helps kids learn. How can we teach critical thinking?

Lecturer in Critical Thinking; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

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Peter Ellerton consults to the Centre for Critical and Creative Thinking. He is a Fellow of the Rationalist Society of Australia.

University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Few people doubt the value of developing students’ thinking skills. A 2013 survey in the United States found 93% of employers believe a candidate’s

demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important [the emphasis is in the original] than [their] undergraduate major.

A focus on critical thinking is also common in education. In the Australian Curriculum, critical and creative thinking are known as “ general capabilities ”; the US has a similar focus through their “ common core ”.

Critical thinking is being taught successfully in a number of programs in Australian schools and universities and around the world. And various studies show these programs improve students’ thinking ability and even their standardised test scores.

But what is critical thinking and how can we teach it?

What we mean by critical thinking

There are many definitions of critical thinking that are vague or ill-formed. To help address this, let’s start by saying what critical thinking is not.

First, critical thinking is not just being smart. Being able to recognise a problem and find the solution are characteristics we associate with intelligence. But they are by themselves not critical thinking.

Intelligence, at least as measured by IQ tests, is not set in stone. But it does not seem to be strongly affected by education (all other things being equal), requiring years of study to make any significant difference, if at all. The ability to think critically, however, can improve significantly with much shorter interventions, as I will show.

Read more: Knowledge is a process of discovery: how constructivism changed education

Second, critical thinking is not just difficult thinking. Some thinking we see as hard, such as performing a complex chemical analysis, could be done by computers. Critical thinking is more about the quality of thinking than the difficulty of a problem.

So, how do we understand what good quality thinking is?

Critical thinkers have the ability to evaluate their own thinking using standards of good reasoning. These include what we collectively call the values of inquiry such as precision, clarity, depth and breadth of treatment, coherence, significance and relevance.

I might claim the temperature of the planet is increasing, or that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon is greater than it was last year. While these statements are accurate, they lack precision: we would also like to know by how much they are increasing to make the statement more meaningful.

Or I might wonder if the biodiversity of Tasmania’s old growth forests would be affected by logging. Someone might reply if we did not log these forests, jobs and livelihoods would be at risk. A good critical thinker will point out while this is a significant issue, it is not relevant to the question .

Critical thinkers also examine the structure of arguments to evaluate the strength of claims. This is not just about deciding whether a claim is true or not, but also whether a conclusion can be logically supported by the available data through an understanding of how arguments work.

Critical thinkers make the quality of their thinking an object of study. They are sensitive to the values of inquiry and the quality of inferences drawn from given information.

They are also meta-cognitive - meaning they’re aware of their thought processes (or some of them) such as understanding how and why they arrive at particular conclusions - and have the tools and ability to evaluate and improve their own thinking.

How we can teach it

Many approaches to developing critical thinking are based on Philosophy for Children , a program that involves teaching the methodology of argument and focuses on thinking skills. Other approaches provide this focus outside of a philosophical context.

Read more: How to make good arguments at school (and everywhere else)

Teachers at one Brisbane school, who have extensive training in critical thinking pedagogies, developed a task that asked students to determine Australia’s greatest sports person.

Students needed to construct their own criteria for greatness. To do so, they had to analyse the Australian sporting context, create possible evaluative standards, explain and justify why some standards would be more acceptable than others and apply these to their candidates.

They then needed to argue their case with their peers to develop criteria that were robust, defensible, widely applicable and produced a choice that captured significant and relevant aspects of Australian sport.

Learning experiences and assessment items that facilitate critical thinking skills include those in which students can:

• challenge assumptions
• frame problems collectively
• question creatively
• construct, analyse and evaluate arguments
• discerningly apply values of inquiry
• engage in a wide variety of cognitive skills, including analysing, explaining, justifying and evaluating (which creates possibilities for argument construction and evaluation and for applying the values of inquiry)

One strategy that also has a large impact on students’ ability to analyse and evaluate arguments is argument mapping , in which a student’s reasoning can be visually displayed by capturing the inferential pathway from premises to conclusion. Argument maps are an important tool in making our reasoning available for analysis and evaluation.

How we know it works

Studies involving a Philosophy for Children approach show children experience cognitive gains , as measured by improved academic outcomes, for several years after having weekly classes for a year compared to their peers.

Read more: Who am I? Why am I here? Why children should be taught philosophy (beyond better test scores)

This type of argument-based intellectual engagement , however, can show high outcomes in terms of the quality of thinking in any classroom.

Research also shows deliberate attention to the practice of reasoning in the context of our everyday lives can be significantly improved through targeted teaching.

Researchers looking at the gains made in a single semester of teaching critical thinking with argument maps said

the critical thinking gains measured […] are close to that which could be expected to result from three years of undergraduate education.

Students who are explicitly taught to think well also do better on subject-based exams and standardised tests than those who do not.

Our yet-to-be-published study, using verified data, showed students in years three to nine who engaged in a series of 12 one-hour teacher-facilitated online lessons in critical thinking, showed a significant increase in relative gains in NAPLAN test results – as measured against a control group and after controlling for other variables.

In terms of developing 21st century skills, which includes setting up students for lifelong learning, teaching critical thinking should be core business.

The University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project has a number of tools to help teach critical thinking skills. One is a web-based mapping system , now in use in a number of schools and universities, to help increase the critical thinking abilities of students.

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7 Tips for Cultivating Critical Thinking for Kids Throughout the School Year

Jan. 24, 2021

In the world of education, the phrase “critical thinking skills” is used so widely, that most of us don’t stop to truly contemplate about what it means for our early learners. Over the years, many educational buzzwords have come and gone, but now more than ever before are teachers and researchers realizing the true importance of planting the seeds for critical analysis. 

Most of us already know that our little learners are notoriously concrete learners, which is to say that they tend to think literally about ideas and concepts. Any teacher could tell you that students don’t actually develop the ability to think critically in an authentic way until well into adolescence. So naturally, you might be wondering just how we can go about teaching critical thinking skills to children. 

That’s why it’s important to know that critical thinking isn’t just about possessing the skills or ability to be able to do it; instead, teachers and parents must form the foundations for such analysis by cultivating a mindset in which kids are able to develop throughout their elementary and middle school years. As a result, the goal is for students to use such skills effectively as they approach complex topics and ideas in high school. 

Before exploring strategies parents and teachers can use to foster critical thinking for kids, it’s important to understand exactly what analytical thinking entails and how it helps kids grow into successful adults. 

Why Critical Thinking Matters? 

Simply put, it is the ability to think clearly and rationally about a complex topic or idea and analyze it in a way that helps us solve problems. Deep analysis over a topic or problem is key to success in college and in our careers, as it helps our society move forward with solutions to our everyday problems. Without it, doctors and researchers wouldn’t be able to create different therapies for common ailments, and law enforcement agencies wouldn’t be able to solve crimes. In all walks of life, critical thinking is essential to our lives. 

To think critically, kids must have key content knowledge to set the stage for deep analytical thinking! Try our all-in-one learning app to hone academic skills. Try it for free today!

For elementary students who aren’t yet developmentally able to think deeply as adults, developing these skills mean that parents and teachers must plant the seeds to form a foundation on which kids can grow their ability to do so. This means that we must encourage a critical thinking mindset, which goes beyond just having the skills themselves; fostering an attitude or frame of mind that allows children to learn to think analytically is what teachers and parents should really strive for. As adults guide elementary school children towards deep thought, they should notice the attributes listed below of a budding critical thinker. 

Start Learning 

What Does a Critical Thinker Look or Act Like? 

To continue with the above metaphor, once teachers plant the seeds for critical thinking, how do they know of those seeds start to sprout? Pay attention to the following attributes that show a student moving from concrete to critical thinking: 

• They approach learning situations with an open mind
• They understand that there might be more than one right (or wrong) answer
• They look for evidence to support their ideas
• They ask questions based upon evidence

If you found the list above eye-opening, don’t worry! Kindergarteners certainly do not step foot in the classroom already armed with the above qualities. At this point, you might be wondering how children can reach such a level where they exhibit the mindset above. Let’s take a look at strategies to help move kids from literal to analytical! 

7 Tips for Cultivating a Positive Critical Thinking Mindset

Whether you’re a teacher or a parent, you might be curious what you can do to support your kids in their learning journey. Try the following strategies to unleash your child’s inner analytical thinking skills: 

Ask open-ended questions 

Think about the last time you read a book with your kids. Chances are, you might have asked a few comprehension questions. But were those questions yes or no questions? Did they necessitate more than a one-worded response? Any question that can be answered using one word is a close-ended question. 

Because a student can easily answer them with simple recalled facts, these types of questions are unhelpful when it comes to fostering critical thinking. Instead, ask questions that allows children to think about a response and provide a full sentence (or more!) response. Don’t forget to allow students enough time to process information, so be patient while waiting for a response. If they get stuck, give them a small hint to guide them down the right path. 

Set the stage for effective critical thinking by reinforcing key academic knowledge in a fun and engaging way! Check out our Talented and Gifted app to find quality learning games, lessons, worksheets and more, free for 30 days!    

Create an atmosphere where kids aren’t afraid to be wrong.

Teaching critical thinking in schools is important, but it isn’t affective if students are afraid to raise their hand and join in the discussion or answer the question! Oftentimes, kids are reluctant to speak in class because they’re afraid of how they will be judged by their peers if they answer incorrectly. Instead, to foster critical thinking skills, create a classroom (or family) environment where they can feel free to think deeply without the fear of being laughed at.

To do this, stress to children that it’s okay to be wrong sometimes, and that we learn the most when we learn through our mistakes. Create a strong rapport with children to ensure that they know that you care about them as a person, so they will be willing to take risks, think deeply, and volunteer ideas and answers, even if they might be wrong. 

Connect different ideas and examine relationships between them

During class or family discussions, games, or activities, it’s important to connect different ideas together to see the relationships that exist between them. For instance, if a child is volunteering at a soup kitchen for homeless people, they might eventually wonder how people end up in that position where they need such public assistance. This would be the perfect time to connect different ideas in an age-appropriate way, like poverty, racial inequality, or family issues. Talking about these subjects would help connect certain issues, like poverty, to homelessness, showing the relationship between them. 

Kick off a conversation with your little learner after watching a video. Explore topics your kid is curious about and discuss them in a fun and engaging manner! Check the video below to get your conversation rolling:

Examine different points of view

Oftentimes children will believe that there is only one “right” way of thinking, when in fact everyone is different and has the right to have varying opinions on complex topics. When faced with a subject like social studies, it’s important to encourage kids to seek out and try to understand topics from others’ point of view. This not only will help kids learn to think critically, it will also make them more compassionate and empathetic towards others. 

Inspire imagination and creativity 

It’s hard to think critically about any topic that’s boring for kids! Children are known for their vast imaginations, and it’s important to use it to their full advantage! To do this, think about project-based learning, or allowing kids to have a choice about what topics they explore in preschool learning worksheets within the wider curriculum. As a teacher, write (guided) student choice into your lesson plans for a particular activity or project. As a parent, explore ideas your child is interested in through science experiments, art projects, etc. 

Collaboration: work with a friend!

As it is often said, two brains are better than one! Working collaboratively with other peers help children consider viewpoints or thoughts that maybe they themselves wouldn’t think of naturally on their own. If you’re a teacher, plan in group work to allow students the opportunity to bounce ideas of their classmates. As a parent, it’s important to find a way your child can work with other children. Organize a play and study group if you have an only child, or if your kids are not similar in age. Otherwise, let kids work together with siblings or cousins as they tackle science experiments or play-based learning.

Use evidence to create questions

One of the best ways to tell if kids are developing the skills they need to become critical thinkers is to observe their reactions to lessons, or projects. As they look at evidence to drive their conclusions, are they actively asking questions of their own? If so, are these questions relevant to what they’ve observed or learned, or are they more randomized? Guide children to create their own questions based upon what they learn to further help them think more deeply. Over time, children will learn how to use their own questioning to propel their learning to greater heights, coming to conclusions that they wouldn’t otherwise have created without their analytical thinking skills! 

Teaching critical thinking skills to children might at first seem like an impossible task considering the developmental capabilities of children as our kids tend to think on a more literal level. However, students don’t suddenly develop analytical thinking skills overnight, and the process must be taught and reinforced throughout a child’s education! Use the tips above to get kids in acritical thinking mindset to prepare them for high school, college, and beyond! 

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The Importance of Critical Thinking for Kids: Why It Matters for Academic and Real-World Success

• September 14, 2023

It may become tiring when your students continuously ask “why?” throughout the school day, but that simple question is one of the first signs of critical thinking for kids.

American philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey referred to this concept as “reflective thinking.” Dewey defined critical thinking as persistent, active, and careful consideration of a belief or supposed form of knowledge. It requires actively subjecting ideas to review and challenging what you’re told, rather than passively accepting them as truth.

With this thought process being a major part of your students’ brain and cognitive development , it’s important to help nurture it in the classroom with critical thinking activities for kids, so they have the chance to use logic and self-control to solve problems and explore their own creative points of view.

ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI) provides a collection of courses for early childhood educators seeking more guidance and training on how to promote critical thinking in the classroom. We realize that these skills will not only lead to lifelong academic achievement but they also help your students understand how to excel in the real world.

As we consider the importance of critical thinking for kids, we must first denote the foundational skills needed for critical thinking, then consider ways this thinking positively impacts problem-solving and supports academic success. We’ll also share some suggestions for fun projects that connect creativity to nurturing young minds that think critically.

Bloom’s Taxonomy: Levels of Critical Thinking

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a core part of the curricula we use to teach early childhood educators about critical thinking.  It’s also a vital tool teachers use in their day-to-day interactions with children. Bloom’s Taxonomy is laid out as a pyramid, with foundational skills at the bottom and more advanced skills higher up. The lowest phase, “Remember,” doesn’t require a great amount of critical thinking. These signify skills kids use when they memorize things like the alphabet, math facts, sight words, etc. Critical thinking starts to take off in the next steps of the pyramid

Understand – Understanding goes beyond memorization. It’s the difference between a child repeating the rote concept of “2+2 is four” or learning the days of the week versus understanding that when you add 2+2 it’s the same as multiplying those same numbers. Or a child understanding Saturday is the day after Friday and so on. Pure memorization has its place. Still, when a student understands the concept behind something, they’re able to apply what they’ve learned.

Apply – Application widens the world of knowledge and reasoning for young minds. Once they recognize the concept they’ve mastered can apply to other examples, you’ve helped them expand their learning greatly.  Math and science are where this level of critical thinking can easily be recognized, but its present in all subjects. Take sight words, for instance. Students originally memorize these words to help them read. However, once kids learn the phonics of words, they can apply that to tackle new words.

Analyze – Analysis springs your students into the next phase. Analyzing is where that incessant question of why stems because at this point they’re no longer taking things at face value. Analysis leads to students finding their own facts that stand up to inquiry, even when the facts don’t support what they thought. In the instance of your student beginning to question their belief that babies come from storks. Analyzing requires exploring, asking you questions, comparing and contrasting, research, and several other concepts to find the facts. Though they previously let their favorite fairy tales guide them, they now have to determine the best primary sources for information about babies’ birth like their teachers, parents, videos, and reading. Adults who find success in life have to use this skill set daily, and critical thinking for kids at this phase also becomes a routine.

Evaluate – Nearing the top of Bloom’s pyramid is evaluation skills, which provide the opportunity for kids to synthesize all the information they’ve learned, understood, applied, and analyzed, and to use it to support their opinions and decisions. The student has taken in all the information about babies, so now they have to remove their bias to make a choice on whether babies come from their mom or a stork. Evaluation moves beyond their beliefs that were supported without the proper elements of critical thinking.

Create – In the final phase, students use every one of those previous skills to create something new. For example, many kids in this age range create and express themselves through art. By starting with understanding and progressing to evaluating, they uncover how to apply the knowledge of how to mix primary colors (blue, red, etc.) to make other hues like purple, brown, etc. Beyond that, they can take their paints and easel to make a portrait that highlights the mixture of colors.

Why critical thinking for kids matters

Students making their way through each level of Bloom’s Taxonomy will think independently and understand concepts thoroughly. Students who know how to analyze and critique ideas are able to connect those skills to several subject matters  to make connections in various disciplines, see knowledge as useful and apply that and comprehend content on a deeper, more lasting level, according to the book “Critical Thinking Development: A Stage Theory.”  With that deeper understanding, your students will not always rely on you and their class time for guidance. Instead, they will seek out information and become self-directed learners in their daily lives.

At such a young age, it may seem difficult to promote critical thinking in the classroom, since it’s more of a habit that falls onto the individual student. However, early childhood educators are best suited to introduce critical thinking to little learners. In a 2018 Reboot Foundation survey, 20 percent of respondents said that critical thinking skills are best developed in early childhood, children ages 5 and younger.

At all ages, there’s an undeniable impact from providing lessons that nurture critical thinking in kids. For academic purposes, your students will be more ready to problem-solve and evaluate the lessons they learn in class. For their own benefit, forming their personal opinions based on deep critical thinking will allow them to find their own interests. When students are truly passionate about a topic or pursuit, they are more engaged and willing to experiment. The process of expanding their knowledge brings about a lot of opportunities for critical thinking. You have the chance to encourage this action and witness the benefits of the child investing in their niche interest in insects, performing arts, space, and more.

How to make critical thinking for kids fun

Critical thinking is all about sparking and responding to curiosity. There are a number of critical thinking activities for kids that have been proven helpful for early childhood educators.

Below, you’ll find a few fun ideas for your classroom:

Journal Time

Journaling may seem like a simple task but offers a daily or weekly opportunity to get your students in an imaginative mindset. You can incorporate just five minutes of instruction time each day to ask kids an open-ended question they can respond to using written words, a drawing, etc. For example, “What did you like about the experiment we did today?” or “What’s your favorite day of the week, and why?”

The kids may use words and pictures, depending on their level of writing skills, to answer the questions.

Lego-theme Party

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a student that won’t quickly say yes to a Lego party. This party is an opportunity for each student to use their imagination to create their own scene or theme based on one-word prompts. Just ask your students to create a farm, a store, the school, etc. using Legos.

The Lego creations allow them to use their imagination to create various themes, but they may have questions about what to include. You can give them helpful hints (like mentioning animals on a farm), but make sure your students are responsible for the final outcome. After everyone’s done, you can see how each student applied their critical thinking with very little guidance.

Make Your Own Menu

This food-themed critical thinking activity is sure to be a treat.

Gather artificial food items and sit them in front of the class. For this activity, ask each student to pick which foods they want for their personal menu. The students might ask how to spell the names of items or ingredients, but they’ll be fully in charge of what concoctions they create.

At the end, each student can present their menu and explain why they chose their food items. Not only will the students have a better handle on critical thinking, but they’ll also learn their classmates’ favorite foods.

These critical thinking activities for kids give your students the opportunity to question, analyze and evaluate in creative ways on topics that relate to them. Though critical thinking is a nuanced lesson, CCEI has designed courses that can help teachers inspire and guide students toward long-term academic success, such as Critical Thinking Skills in the Preschool Environment .

Click here to learn more about how to promote critical thinking in the classroom and discover our entire catalog of more than 200+ online courses that cover an array of trainings.

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Fallacy Detectors Part 1

Develop the skills to tackle logical fallacies through a series of 10 science-fiction videos with activities. Recommended for ages 8 and up.

A Statistical Odyssey

Learn about common statistical misconceptions with an interactive space adventure. Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Symbolic Logic for Teens Part 1

Learn how to make sense of complicated arguments with 14 video lessons and activities. Recommended for ages 13 and up.

Emotional Intelligence

Learn to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions. Designed by child psychologist Ronald Crouch, Ph.D. Recommended for ages 5 and up.

Worksheets & Lesson Plans

Symbolic Logic Worksheets

Worksheets covering the basics of symbolic logic for children ages 12 and up.

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Elementary School Worksheets and Lesson Plans

These lesson plans and worksheets teach students in grades 2-5 about superstitions, different perspectives, facts and opinions, the false dilemma fallacy, and probability.

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Middle School Worksheets and Lesson Plans

These lesson plans and worksheets teach students in grades 5-8 about false memories, confirmation bias, Occam's razor, the strawman fallacy, and pareidolia.

High School Worksheets and Lesson Plans

These lesson plans and worksheets teach students in grades 8-12 about critical thinking, the appeal to nature fallacy, correlation versus causation, the placebo effect, and weasel words.

Statistical Shenanigans Worksheets and Lesson Plans

These lesson plans and worksheets teach students in grades 9 and up the statistical principles they need to analyze data rationally.

Critikid’s Story

My name is Stephanie and I'm an online science teacher and educational video creator. I started Critikid because I noticed a shortage of online critical thinking resources for children. I had been teaching children about logical fallacies and cognitive biases for a while, so I knew that not only could they understand those topics, but they loved learning about them!

I am funding this project through my savings, so a current priority is keeping costs down. My husband, who is a web developer, he designed and built this site. I am teaching online science classes to cover my living expenses, so all money made from sales will go towards funding more content. I don’t have a marketing budget at this time, so if you want to support this project, it would help immensely if you spread the word.

Critikid’s Mission

Critikid’s goal is to give children the tools they need to rationally think about and discuss controversial issues, not to tell them the conclusions they should draw. Critikid’s stance is pro-logic and anti-fallacy. Besides that, I am avoiding taking stances on the side, especially about hot political topics.

Critical thinking is particularly important for children these days. They spend a huge portion of their lives on the Internet, which abounds in polarizing opinions, logical fallacies, and misinformation. This is the battlefield that the kids of today must withstand, and critical thinking is their armor. Critikid’s goal is to help them forge it.

Critical thinking is careful thinking. It is the process of rationally analyzing information, arguments, and even our own thought processes. It lets us distinguish between logical and flawed reasoning in order to communicate clearly, even when communicating with ourselves.

Firstly, critical thinking makes us better communicators. Logical fallacies frequently find their way into conversations, and when we can’t identify them, they tend to derail discussions and make them unproductive. The ability to recognize when you or your conversational partner is committing a logical fallacy can help get the conversation back on track.

Critical thinking also makes us better decision-makers. Understanding cognitive biases means understanding our minds. When we can recognize our cognitive biases, we can get a better idea of why we make the decisions we do.

People who try to sell us products or ideas know all about logical fallacies and cognitive biases, and they know how to use them to their advantage. The ability to think critically helps us to defend ourselves against manipulation.

Children can do activities to develop their critical thinking skills even before they can talk. A toy that lights up when a button is pressed teaches cause and effect, peek-a-boo teaches object permanence, and nesting toys help develop problem-solving skills.

Once kids can talk, they can start to do simple experiments. For example, a parent might ask, “What do you think will happen when I mix the red and blue paint?” The child can make a prediction and then test it by mixing the paints. In the future, I'll post critical thinking activities for kids on this site.

Critikid will offer various levels targeting different age groups. Fallacy Detectors Part 1 is aimed at children ages 8-12. The formal logic course that I am now working on will target kids 13 and up.

I’ve been teaching critical thinking to children for years now, so I know that they are not only capable of understanding it, but they love it. What kid wouldn’t find it amusing to hear about the silly mistakes that even adults can make? Moreover, childhood is the best time to strengthen the mind’s defenses and teach it to recognize its biases. It only gets harder as you get older.

My name is Stephanie Simoes. I’ve been a science teacher and children’s educational video creator for many years. My background is in biology and philosophy. I’m running this project with a very small team of talented freelancers.

If you are interested in learning more about my online science classes, please email me at [email protected]

What's next

Fallacy Detectors Part 2

Coming soon! - The fallacy-busting quest continues with 10 more fallacies to defeat.

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Cognitive Biases

Coming Soon - Discover the sneaky tricks your brain plays on you and become a better decision-maker.

Social Media Simulator

Coming Soon - Prepare yourself for the fallacy-filled online world.

MSU Extension Child & Family Development

The importance of critical thinking for young children.

Kylie Rymanowicz, Michigan State University Extension - May 03, 2016

Critical thinking is essential life skill. Learn why it is so important and how you can help children learn and practice these skills.

We use critical thinking skills every day. They help us to make good decisions, understand the consequences of our actions and solve problems. These incredibly important skills are used in everything from putting together puzzles to mapping out the best route to work. It’s the process of using focus and self-control to solve problems and set and follow through on goals. It utilizes other important life skills like making connections , perspective taking and communicating . Basically, critical thinking helps us make good, sound decisions.

Critical thinking

In her book, “Mind in the Making: The seven essential life skills every child needs,” author Ellen Galinsky explains the importance of teaching children critical thinking skills. A child’s natural curiosity helps lay the foundation for critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to take in information, analyze it and make judgements about it, and that type of active engagement requires imagination and inquisitiveness. As children take in new information, they fill up a library of sorts within their brain. They have to think about how the new information fits in with what they already know, or if it changes any information we already hold to be true.

Supporting the development of critical thinking

Michigan State University Extension has some tips on helping your child learn and practice critical thinking.

• Encourage pursuits of curiosity . The dreaded “why” phase. Help them form and test theories, experiment and try to understand how the world works. Encourage children to explore, ask questions, test their theories, think critically about results and think about changes they could make or things they could do differently.
• Learn from others. Help children think more deeply about things by instilling a love for learning and a desire to understand how things work. Seek out the answers to all of your children’s “why” questions using books, the internet, friends, family or other experts.
• Help children evaluate information. We are often given lots of information at a time, and it is important we evaluate that information to determine if it is true, important and whether or not we should believe it. Help children learn these skills by teaching them to evaluate new information. Have them think about where or who the information is coming from, how it relates to what they already know and why it is or is not important.
• Promote children’s interests. When children are deeply vested in a topic or pursuit, they are more engaged and willing to experiment. The process of expanding their knowledge brings about a lot of opportunities for critical thinking, so to encourage this action helps your child invest in their interests. Whether it is learning about trucks and vehicles or a keen interest in insects, help your child follow their passion.
• Teach problem-solving skills. When dealing with problems or conflicts, it is necessary to use critical thinking skills to understand the problem and come up with possible solutions, so teach them the steps of problem-solving and they will use critical thinking in the process of finding solutions to problems.

For more articles on child development, academic success, parenting and life skill development, please visit the MSU Extension website.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension . For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu . To have a digest of information delivered straight to your email inbox, visit https://extension.msu.edu/newsletters . To contact an expert in your area, visit https://extension.msu.edu/experts , or call 888-MSUE4MI (888-678-3464).

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How to teach kids critical thinking

Every day more and more people realize how important critical thinking is. In today’s world, full of different information, influencers, web-content, fake news, and various opinions that seem to be facts, critical thinking is one of the biggest superpowers of a mature and competitive personality. So, why not help your child and push him or her to this skill as soon as possible?

To begin with, what is critical thinking, in general? It is a mixture of skills such as decision-making, finding analogies and causal links between events and processes, suggesting hypotheses, etc. Critical thinking is supposed to help you not to get lost in controversial information.

Some people claim that such a model of thinking might mute the flow of creativity in children. However, it’s totally the opposite — critical thinking will help kids broaden mind borders and find a field for new ideas. This skill is essential for everyone, but, as known, children usually learn things faster than adults. So it would be a great idea to explore this kind of thinking from primary school or even earlier.

Why is critical thinking important for kids?

Let’s see in what way critical thinking can improve your child’s life.

• Firstly, it is a beneficial method to explore the world . If a child learns things using critical thinking, he or she will avoid loads of mistakes and misleadings which could have traumatized him/her.
• Secondly, this skill makes a mind work faster . When things don’t make sense from first sight — think the situation over with a critical approach, and the puzzle will soon be complete.
• Thirdly, critical thinking is good support in school subjects . For instance, children with developed thinking habits are more likely to succeed in their exams. Moreover, it will be useful for every kid, no matter what direction he or she chooses. Language learners will improve faster if they use this approach; future inventors will do better with the projects after learning the basics of critical thinking; science pupils will do their research more deeply and consciously.

How to develop critical thinking in a child?

But what should adults do to help children gain this skill? There are some tips. They would be useful in your everyday conversations as well as on special seminars.

The easiest way to teach a kid something is to uphold the same principles you want to cultivate in him/her. It never hurts to learn some critical thinking skills yourself. Thus, you will help your child learn essential skills in practice and improve your own way of thinking. Be sure your child will look up to you and, sooner or later, will try to adopt your thinking habits.

No instructions

You probably know that there is a method of teaching children to swim, when an “instructor” just throws a child into the water to awaken his/her survival instincts and, at the same time, watches him/her closely to give a hand at the critical moment. Roughly speaking, the same method is very effective in terms of critical thinking. You let a child do something on his/her own and take all the risks. Afterward, it is necessary to discuss everything and figure out how it could have been done differently. Surely, everything should be within the norm — don’t forget that, first of all, you are a responsible parent.

More questions

Encourage your kid to be curious. Yes, it can be quite exhausting to reply to all the why’s and what’s all day long, but your child will definitely be grateful for it in the future. You’d better teach a child to avoid taking everything for granted. Instead of that, explain to him/her the importance of critical research even in everyday issues. If this useful habit is formed in childhood, there will be much fewer problems in high school and adulthood.

Agree/Disagree

If a person can express his/her agreement or disagreement with something, that means he/she is able to think critically. However, there is a thing — in addition to the statement, it is necessary to attach an explanation. Another way to help a child develop his/her thought is to ask more specifically: Is it right or wrong? True? False? Normal? All these questions will put a child in a position where critical thinking is required.

Good listening

This sort of soft skills is crucial in lots of professions nowadays but, at the same time, it is helpful in everyday life. When a person is a good listener, he/she doesn’t stop talking just for some personal reasons. It means that a person gives another one space and time to express his/her own ideas, without drawing all the attention to oneself. A good listener will not cause pressure and push his/her thoughts when an opponent doesn’t want it. Also, such a person will be sincerely interested in another person and new statements.

Clear meaning

This can be easily illustrated with a school studying. When a child learns something from a history textbook, he/she doesn’t need to learn it by heart. The point is to understand all the processes and causal links and be able to reproduce them in your own words. So, if you are not sure your child gets something right, ask him/her to clarify the meaning of his/her words. Ideally, a kid would explain the point in the narrative but keeping the main sense.

Biases matter

Even some adults often forget how strong the affection of biases could be — not to mention children. It’s a great idea to talk to your child about stereotypes, emotional intelligence, and prejudice and find a common solution on how to overcome their influence on our way of thinking.

All in all, parents and teachers should pay attention to developing their children’s critical thinking but without tight control. The best thing to do is give kids enough freedom to make their own decisions and, simultaneously, be ready to discuss difficulties they might encounter. Although children don’t know much about this world, they are people, only a bit smaller than adults. So treat them with respect, help them explore things, talk to them properly and don’t forget that you were young, too. It’s not much, but it’s an important job to do.

Critical thinking activities for kids

Finally, we offer you some activities that would be beneficial in learning critical thinking skills. You can practice them all with your child, and in some time, you will find out which one works out for you.

Tell me why

Imagine your kid is telling you a story from school. He or she disapproves of a classmate’s action. Try to develop this thought by asking why this action doesn’t seem right. You can also continue this discussion with a question like “Why should he/she act in a different way?” or “Why wouldn’t you act like this?”.

Question by question

Be cautious not to make a discussion overloaded — just one question at a time. Let’s go on with the same example: we start with a generalization like “Is it always inappropriate to act like this?” encouraging a kid to search for a counter-example. Then we listen to it and put it on a test with a question like “In this particular situation, was there any chance to act differently, or was it a necessity?”

Generally speaking, all sorts of questions help learn critical thinking. Not only make your kid ask as many things as possible but also get yourself into a habit of asking him or her about their mindset. We have already mentioned the importance of the question “Why?” but, in addition to it, you can ask for clarification of some thoughts or for more information on a subject. Show your child that it is significant to be able to support your statements with examples — ask him/her to give you one. Also, one of the main things to do is to link conditions with a situation. To develop this side of skill, ask a child what the particular situation depends on.

Predictions

One side of critical thinking is predicting conclusions, however, not wizard-like but with the help of analytical skills and logic. Ask your child a question, “What would happen if I did this?” and discuss the answer. You can also train this skill while reading or watching a film. At the crisis moment of a plot, try to stop for a second and ask your kid to predict what will happen next and why. This activity develops imagination and creativity, not to mention critical thinking.

Time to write

It is widely known that writing helps students bear new information in mind and make their statements clearer and more reasonable. Though children are not fancy to use pens and copybooks in today’s world, replacing them with laptops and smartphones, it is beneficial to write down your thoughts on paper. Make it a merry game for a kid, like writing a letter to your future self or creating a script for a Hollywood movie. Later on, this will help a child in scientific research in school or university.

Debating club

No matter how close you are with your child, he or she needs other kids of the same age around. They can be found in a debating club — a place where children learn the art of discussion. Some schools offer these facilities but if there is no such place in your school, try to find it someplace in your area. Debating club is an excellent opportunity to raise a child’s self-confidence and improve critical thinking skills via discussions on relevant topics.

To conclude, critical thinking is a crucial part of a strong personality. Like most of the skills, it’s better to teach critical thinking to children — not only because they take in new information faster than grown-ups, but also because it is hard to change an adult person’s mindset. Critical thinking will make your child successful in many ways: from school homework to comfort living in modern post-industrial society.

Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

Are there any services that can help me use more critical thinking?

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How Parents Can Teach Kids Critical Thinking

A research-based guide to help highlight the importance of critical thinking..

Posted February 21, 2020

Recent controversy over the role of social media “ swarms ” in the 2020 election have served as a new reminder — as if we needed one — that public discourse is in bad disrepair. In the last few years have seen countless incidents of people — including many who should know better — weighing in on issues prematurely with little nuance and unhelpful vitriol, being duped by badly biased information or outright fake news , and automatically attributing the worst intentions to their opponents.

Liberal democracies have always relied on flawed sources to inform the public, but not until now have we been confronted with an online medium seemingly designed to play on our biases and emotions; encourage knee-jerk reactions, groupthink , and superficiality; and distract us from deeper thinking.

Better critical thinking skills are needed to help us confront these challenges. Nevertheless, we still don’t have a good handle on what it is and, especially, how best to foster it among children of all ages.

The stakes are now higher than ever.

To address this deficit, Reboot Foundation recently put out a Parents’ Guide to critical thinking. I work for Reboot and helped on the guide that attempts to give parents and other adults the tools and understanding they need to help their kids cope with technological upheaval, acquire the skills they need to navigate an ever more complicated and information-rich world, and overcome the pitfalls of biased and emotional reasoning.

1. Starting Young

As researchers have noted for some time now, critical thinking can’t be cleanly separated from cognitive development more generally. So, although many people still think of critical thinking as something that is appropriate to teach only in college or late high school, parents and educators should actually devote attention to developing critical thinking skills at a young age.

Of course, it’s not necessary or even possible to start teaching 4-year-olds high-level logic . But there’s a lot parents can do to open up their children’s minds to the world around them. The most important thing to foster at this young age is what researchers call metacognition : awareness of one’s own thinking and thought processes.

It’s only with metacognition that children will learn to think more strategically, identify errors in their thinking patterns, and recognize their own limitations and the value of others’ perspectives. Here are some good ways to foster these habits of mind.

• Encourage kids’ curiosity by asking them lots of questions about why they think what they think. Parents should also not dismiss children’s speculative questions, but encourage them to think those questions through.
• Encourage active reading by discussing and reflecting on books and asking children to analyze different characters’ thoughts and attitudes. Emphasize and embrace ambiguity.
• Expose them as much as possible to children from different backgrounds — whether cultural, geographical, or socio-economic. These experiences are invaluable.
• Bring children into adult conversations , within appropriate limits of course, and don’t just dismiss their contributions. Even if their contributions are unsophisticated or mistaken, engage with children and help them improve.

2. Putting Emotions in Perspective

Just as children need to learn how to step back from their thought processes, they must also learn how to step back from their emotions. As we’ve seen time and again in our public discourse, emotion is often the enemy of thinking. It can lead us to dismiss legitimate evidence; to shortchange perspectives that would otherwise be valuable; and to say and do things we later regret.

When children are young (ages 5 to 9), fostering emotional management should center around learning to take on new challenges and cope with setbacks. It’s important children be encouraged to try new things and not be protected from failure. These can include both intellectual challenges like learning a new language or musical instrument and physical ones like trying out rock-climbing or running a race.

When children fail — as they will — the adults around them should help them see that failing does not make them failures. Quite the opposite: it’s the only way to become successful.

As they get older, during puberty and adolescence , emotional management skills can help them deal better with confusing physical and social changes and maintain focus on their studies and long-term goals . Critical thinking, in this sense, need not — and should not — be dry or academic. It can have a significant impact on children’s and young adults’ emotional lives and their success beyond the classroom .

3. Learning How to Be Online

Finally, critical thinking development in these challenging times must involve an online component. Good citizenship requires being able to take advantage of the wealth of information the internet offers and knowing how to avoid its many pitfalls.

Parental controls can be useful, especially for younger children, and help them steer clear of inappropriate content. But instilling kids with healthy online habits is ultimately more useful — and durable. Parents should spend time practicing web searches with their kids, teaching them how to evaluate sources and, especially, how to avoid distractions and keep focused on the task at hand.

We’ve all experienced the way the internet can pull us off task and down a rabbit hole of unproductive browsing. These forces can be especially hard for children to resist, and they can have long-term negative effects on their cognitive development.

As they get older, children should learn more robust online research skills , especially in how to identify different types of deceptive information and misinformation . Familiarizing themselves with various fact-checking sites and methods can be especially useful. A recent Reboot study found that schools are still not doing nearly enough to teach media literacy to students.

As kids routinely conduct more and more of their social lives online it’s also vital that they learn to differentiate between the overheated discourse on social media and genuine debate.

The barriers to critical thinking are not insurmountable. But if our public discourse is to come through the current upheaval intact, children, beginning at a young age, must learn the skills to navigate their world thoughtfully and critically.

Ulrich Boser is the founder of The Learning Agency and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is the author of Learn Better, which Amazon called “the best science book of the year.”

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Parents' Guide

Developing critical thinking in teens, introduction.

For children aged 13 and older, the development of critical thinking continues to build from the skills acquired and the challenges faced in the first two developmental stages. These skills must continue to be reinforced as the child matures.  

The four basic aspects of critical thinking we examined in the first part of this guide, concerning children aged five to nine , remain relevant, therefore. To review, these were:

Critical thinking based on arguing a point.

Developing self-esteem, the foundation of critical thinking.

Emotional management, a prerequisite for critical thinking.

The social norm of critical thinking.

We also saw new elements come into play between ages 10 and 12 in the acquisition of critical thinking and reasoning skills. These are likewise still important in considering the development of critical thinking in young teenagers:

The development of reasoning skills beyond argument.

Puberty and its implications in terms of interests, self-esteem, and emotional management.

The digital world, via gaming, the internet, and a burgeoning social or pseudo-social life (on social media targeted at young people).

To these concerns are added new set of factors come into play in later adolescence as the cognitive system matures and social life changes. These factors will hugely increase the critical potential of 13 to 15 year olds, while at the same time limiting it in certain respects. These factors are:

The development of formal logic, allowing for more and more complex and abstract lines of reasoning.

New social pressures, including heightened peer pressure and anxieties over social integration. The influences of groups and gangs, which tend to critique the established social order, can also lead to a conformity in attitudes and ways of thinking within the group.

Critical analysis of sources of information and the strengthening of interpretive skills.

Critical thinking in group projects, and as an element of citizenship and social progress .

Beginning at age 13, adolescents can begin to acquire and apply formal logical rules and processes. The rudimentary logic learned at previous stages can now be refined by teaching adolescents some more advanced logical notation and vocabulary, which are outlined in the coming sections. It is important to keep in mind, again, that critical thinking extends far beyond logic, offering tools to apply more broadly to arguments and information encountered in the everyday world.

In the teenage years, social pressures accelerate, and with the internet and social media, these pressures move faster and with more force than ever. As outlined in section two below, critical thinking can prove a valuable resource for teenagers to help cope with these pressures and resist the groupthink that easily emerges in social cliques both online and offline. Critical thinking can also play a role in helping young adults choose and pursue emerging goals, by constructing long-term plans and methods. Finally, critical thinking is an indispensable tool in helping young people understand and analyze the wealth of information sources now bombarding them.

1. Formal Logic

At the age of 13 and older, children can begin to learn the rules of formal logic and further hone their critical thinking skills. whether or not their children are learning these skills in school, parents can help by discussing how to analyze concepts and arguments..

From ages 11 to 12, there gradually develops what Piaget called the formal operational stage . New capabilities at this stage, like deductive (if-then) reasoning and establishing abstract relationships, are generally mastered around ages 15 to 16.

As we saw, by the end of this stage, teenagers, like adults, can use both formal and abstract logic—but only if they have learned the language of logic (“if,” “then,” “therefore,” etc.) and have repeatedly put it to use. Under these circumstances, children learn to extrapolate and make generalizations based on real-life situations. 

Thus, from ages 10 to 12, by stimulating children intellectually—urging them to reflect and establish lines of reasoning—they gradually become able to move beyond a situational logic based on action and observation onto a logic based on rules of deduction independent of the situation at hand.

This ability to manipulate abstract symbols consolidates by around age 15, provided that one has been versed in formal logic.

A and B are two logical propositions, such that A is the opposite of B. From this, we may formally deduce (without reference to  anything concrete) that the proposition P, which states “A or B,” is always true. There are no alternatives, so P fulfills all possibilities. We may also deduce that the proposition P 1 , “A and B,” is always false.  Here, two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. If one is true, the other is false.

These formal operations require both a mature central nervous system and a mature cognitive system. But, since such examples of formal reasoning are detached from everyday life, they require deliberate practice. Even an adult who is out of practice can struggle with formal reasoning.

After working through several examples, parents can help children extract the logical rules behind those examples.

We can present these two rules of logic using more concrete examples, which makes formal reasoning at once more accessible and less intimidating. In concrete form, however, the reasoning will be less easily applied to new situations. 

If proposition A is: “this salmon is farmed,” proposition B (the opposite of A) will be: “this salmon is not farmed.” B could also be expressed  as: “this salmon is wild.” It is easy in this concrete context to see that P, “A or B,” is always true. A salmon must either be farmed or wild. It is also easy to conceive that P 1 , “A and B,” is always false because a salmon cannot be both farmed and wild.

Moving away from situational lines of reasoning allows teens to extrapolate and apply logic to the ever more complex challenges and life events they might encounter as they mature into their young adult years. Without formal logic, young teens and young adults won’t be able to define their formal reasoning abilities to extend past situational deductions and personal life experiences or form larger connections with their surroundings and the human experiences that occur around them everyday.

Once they learn to abstract from concrete examples and express these rules in formal logic, children can form and manipulate logical notation and apply it to a multitude of situations. 

How can we help children from age 13 and older improve their formal logical deduction skills?

We must start by working on these two rules through concrete examples like that of the salmon. After working through several examples, parents can help children extract the logical rules behind those examples. This is the inductive phase: from concrete examples, we extract the common features and express them in a formal rule. 

Next, it will be necessary to prove this rule solely by logical deduction. If we do not do this, we cannot be certain that the rule is valid in every context. Extracting the common features only results in rules which, at this stage, remain merely hypothetical. Only reasoning allows for the generalization of a rule.

Once students have mastered a collection of formal rules, they can be trained to recognize, within a problem or a given context, what rule is applicable. That is, they can take an initial claim (a hypothesis), apply a rule of deduction to it, and arrive at a conclusion.

2. Faulty Reasoning

One important way teenagers can improve their logic and reasoning skills is by using formal definitions. these are necessary for more precise and universal reasoning and can help children identify faulty reasoning., integrating these topic into family discussions can be enormously productive., extension vs. intension.

One idea in formal logic that can be valuable to learn at this age has to do with how concepts are defined. For very young children, categories or concepts are defined according to how they are encountered in everyday life. For example, the general concept of color is determined by all the examples of colors children have come across or imagined. The concept covers all these different experiences. This is called the concept’s “ extension .”

But it is important that children from the age of around 13 start to learn to define concepts not merely according to their extension, but in a formal, scientific manner.

For example, instead of using a definition drawn from experience, students can explain that a color is a perception that our eye, linked to the brain, produces when an electromagnetic wave of a given frequency hits our retina. This definition according to the formal, internal qualities of the concept is called the concept’s “intension.” 

Definition by intension is more complicated, but it allows for the use of the concept in formal reasoning. Therefore, definition by intension gears the child’s mind towards higher-level abstract reasoning. 

For example, if we have to determine whether or not a given entity is a color or not, the intensional definition will offer us formal criteria for making a judgment.

Here’s another example. The prime numbers can be defined formally by intension: they are “the numbers that are only divisible by themselves and one.” If we were to learn only the extension of the term “prime number,” on the other hand, we would only have a list of the numbers that we know are prime.

It is clear that if we only have this definition by extension and we encounter a new, very large number — higher than the largest number on the list we’ve learned—we will have no criteria for knowing whether it’s prime. But if we have the formal definition by intension, we will, with the help of a calculator, be able to determine whether it is only divisible by one and itself and, therefore, prime.

We can’t productively critique the arguments of others if we don’t share their definitions of concepts.

When we are young, we learn about the world through definitions by extension during the course of our interactions with objects and other people. Our brain defines concepts by extension and then extracts the common features to produce a working definition. 

But these definitions are subjective since they depend on our history of encounters with relevant examples. Thus, all of the concepts we have created do not match other people’s concepts precisely, despite being identically named. They depend on the particular experiences we have had.

Yet, towards the ages of 13 to 15, with mathematical and formal logic, it becomes possible to define concepts by intension and, therefore, to share objective meaning with others. Teenagers can enter a world  of shared and precise meanings. This is a prerequisite for the application of precise and formal critical thinking. We can’t productively critique the arguments of others if we don’t share their definitions of concepts.

The formal approach for children aged 13 and up should, then be twofold: formalize the definition of the concepts used and formalize the logical deduction itself. This comes with practice and enhances both children’s capacity to communicate and their critical faculties.

The Concepts of Intension and Extension​

Recognizing faulty reasoning.

As has been discussed in previous sections, developing critical reasoning requires more than simply knowing how to reason formally and contextually. It is also necessary to learn how to recognize flaws in the reasoning of other people who may wish to convince us of their way of thinking, either for narcissistic reasons or to lead us to act to their own advantage.

Such flaws can occur on several levels:

Erroneous rules of logic, leading to false reasoning based on reliable hypotheses.

False hypotheses (starting points for reasoning): even if the reasoning is valid, the conclusion may be false. Certain politicians use this strategy very frequently.

Using a formal rule in a situation to which it does not apply. This often occurs in over-simplified mathematical modeling of complex material, for example when an essay in the humanities is interpreted using only the tools of formal logic. 

These three types of flaws can be worked into family discussions, with the goal of training children to counter weak or manipulative lines of argument. School should not be too heavily relied upon to provide this kind of practice for your children. Already between the ages of 13 and 15, they are able to construct brilliant lines of reasoning, which will prevent them from being tricked by manipulative or intellectually limited people.

Flawed Reasoning​

3. individuation, teenagers have a natural impulse to try to separate themselves from their parents and their backgrounds. a good critical thinking foundation can help ease the transition toward individuality and adulthood. better reasoning can help teenagers cope with their emerging independence and avoid an unthinking rejection of their background., what is individuation.

Individuating and the stages of individuation are concepts developed by renowned analytical psychologist Carl Jung . Jung founded analytic psychology and the concepts of extraverted and introverted personalities, archetypes, and the collective unconscious were also developed by Jung along with the theory of individuation.

In adolescence,  the individuation process heralds the initial stages that a child takes toward  becoming a unique individual, something more than just your parents’ offspring, is a psychological necessity. 

Part of differentiating yourself from the world around you is developing a self-image. It is the only way to avoid fading completely into your surroundings—and ending up in utter conformity, or worse.

Individuation adolescence

Individuation is indispensable to society. In order to sustain itself, society needs diversity. Cultures lacking the social norm of individuation are more fragile. They produce citizens who have identical self-images and behavioral patterns, whereas adapting to change requires diversity, creativity, evolution, and, therefore, critical thinking.

Only very rarely (or not at all) have individuals in these cultures of weak individuation experienced the feelings of crisis and malaise we associate with adolescence. The transition from childhood to adulthood unfolds instead according to so-called “rites of passage.” 

Our civilization has undergone a long and profound evolution through philosophy, science, psychoanalysis, and politics, leading us to a social norm that rejects the idea that the individual in the family, the social group, or the nation, is like a mere cell in an organ. Indeed, everyone has the right and even the “duty” to be reborn by deviating from their origins. 

This is an immense challenge because this act of individuation, this self-creation, arises at a moment when children are not yet able to achieve this “rebirth” autonomously, as they enter an unknown world without even knowing what it will be like. We call this period “adolescence” or even “kidulthood” when it lasts a long time—a growing phenomenon.

Experiencing society predominantly through school or family simultaneously generates pressure to conform and to individualize. It comes as no surprise that this causes some problems.

The desire to be free and independent generates psychological conflict.

What is the process of individuation.

Children have not fully matured intellectually or cognitively when they are confronted with this contradiction. They are, therefore, unable to conceptualize it. This is why, in their behavior and attitudes, children can sometimes bear a closer resemblance to skittish animals than calm self-creators responsible for their own gradual reinvention.

Although unaware of it, children embark upon adolescence through “second-degree” conformity through culture, since adolescence is a societal construct rather than a psycho-behavioral component of puberty. 

Paradoxically, children aged 13 to 15 or older may not experience teenage angst at all, thanks to their critical faculties. In fact, if they feel that their life is fulfilling and stable, they will be able to avoid getting sucked into an alternative world by other children their age. Their youth may pass without them having experienced teen crisis. Instead, they construct their identity reflectively and without drama.  

This, of course, is not typical. The desire to be free and independent generates psychological conflict. The fear and the anxiety associated with this moment of struggle incites rationalizations, thoughts which retrospectively come to explain dissatisfaction, malaise, and rebellion. Every situation that is not comfortable or does not come off successfully, we tend to attribute to our external environment and other people. Consequently, if things are not going well for us—if we are not happy—we tend to blame it on an unjust world.

Parents of teenagers are very familiar with the result: sweeping criticism of everything teens encounter. To the teenager, everyone sucks: parents, teachers, politicians, journalists, and so on. This reaction can generate conflict, but, as is explained in the next section, it also presents a good opportunity for deepening critical faculties.

4. Teenage Negativity

The need to become an individual can often manifest itself in negative and unyielding attitudes. though teenagers’ criticisms and complaints can be unsophisticated, parents should still engage with them. critical reasoning can help make the process of becoming an individual less painful and more productive..

It can be difficult to know how to react to teenagers’ negativity. On the one hand, their attitudes may seem too extreme and unsophisticated to take seriously. On the other, they can be exasperating and even hurtful when directed against the parents themselves. But parents should do their best to avoid being either dismissive or defensive. 

The teenager’s emotional negativity is an extreme version of something we are all prone to indulge in from time to time, no matter how highly we may prize our calmness and understanding. Parents should remind themselves that this negativity is part of a bid to become a fully-fledged autonomous individual with an opinion deserving of recognition and respect. 

Parents can help them reach this goal by taking their teens’ complaints seriously. This doesn’t mean telling them they’re right when they aren’t, but treating them as conversation partners worthy of engagement. Parents can ask their children to substantiate and defend their claims using argument and evidence; challenge their children when they fail to argue well; and compliment them when make good points.

This can be a good opportunity for parents themselves to refresh their ability to put aside emotions and handle a topic fairly and dispassionately. By modeling these kinds of intellectual virtues parents make it more likely that their children will adopt them.

Arguing with teenagers can be fun, especially if they begin to experience the kind of satisfaction that comes out of reasoned debate over complicated issues.

Of course these arguments will not always go smoothly, but over time parents can help bring their children into the critical community. Arguing with teenagers can be fun, especially if they begin to experience the kind of satisfaction that comes out of reasoned debate over complicated issues.

The quest for individuality also manifests itself in a need to create or to win over a new group, a group that can become one’s ideal family. The phenomenon of teenage cliques or gangs—and even radical organizations—arises from this fact. Not being understood or accepted is stifling. We need an escape valve, and so, as social animals, we create or join a group that meets our needs.

Individuation and Belonging

5. sense of belonging in a community, although they may relentlessly criticize society, in so doing teenagers are really showing that they belong to it. parents should help teenagers learn to articulate their dissatisfaction and develop a sense of belonging. . critical thinking can help them reconcile their desire for independence with the value of tradition and belonging to society., what it means to belong.

Belonging means acceptance into a larger whole, society, community, or organization. It’s a fairly common experience that occurs at many levels of life from the familial unit, to work, to school, to the society as a whole.

From the age of 12 to 13, in order for children to be able to articulate their disagreements with the status quo, they must develop their critical reasoning skills. As adults, we must, again, engage with these critiques if they are well-founded. This shows children that rejecting their endeavors is not the automatic response. This makes them feel valued and capable of exercising autonomous thought which can, moreover, influence adults.

In this way, critical thinking also — perhaps unexpectedly — makes it easier for children to accept at least a part of the cultural heritage that is offered to or imposed on them by language, upbringing, and custom. 

Allowing a teenager to convince others through argument and logical inference makes them feel more able to become an individual without breaking away from the group—a rebellion-free evolution. If they are allowed to articulate their dissent, they may even find school or home life less stifling than social life in a peer group where they are constantly pressured to conform. Encouraging this kind of critical thinking also protects them from negative influences (cults, crime, etc.), since their critical toolkit allows them to stay lucid when faced with wild, dangerous speech and behavior (alcohol, drugs, etc.).

From as early an age as possible, learning how to argue and reason critically using one’s capacities for inference allows for a balance in adolescence between individualization and an acceptance of heritage. 

Indeed, the need to distinguish oneself and to proclaim one’s individuality is always met by membership in a group — now often with the help of social media. This need is only met if these groups are not as prescriptive and stifling as the society from which the child is trying to escape and if they do not cause harm. 

Part of critical reasoning is the development of the capacity to question environmental, familial, and social norms and prescriptions. But this requires competence in a universal language made up of inferential logic and the art of arguing,  which comes from the critiqued society. Critical reasoning itself thus serves as lasting proof that one remains a part of that society. In the very act of distinguishing themselves from the pack, teenagers show they belong.

Critical reasoning anchors children in reality, allowing them to achieve individuality in their own unique way. Parents can help by supporting their children’s projects and encouraging them to engage with the world around them.

Building a sense of belonging.

Cultural heritage—including language, law, food, art, manners and customs, traditions, and scientific knowledge—represents an incredible resource that is at once imposed and offered. Teaching children critical thinking and reasoning means that they will not simply dismiss this priceless treasure in its entirety even though they will partially free themselves from it. Critical reasoning makes the process of individualization less violent and painful for both children and parents, thanks to the balance between the assimilation of culture and a healthy questioning of it.

In other words, critical reasoning—expressed through argumentative and logical know-how and rooted in self-esteem and love—anchors children in reality, allowing them to achieve individuality in their own unique way. Parents can help by supporting their children’s projects and encouraging them to engage with the world around them.

Cognitive faculties participate, in this way, in the psychological make-up of children. Critical reasoning has a twofold power: it is both integrator and liberator. It alerts us to the ways our culture forms us and helps us partly to overcome it. It is a fundamental pillar of our citizenship, on a national and global scale. 

Benefits of sense of belonging

Critical reasoning serves as proof to children that they are listened to and that they are the primary drivers of their own destinies. Subsequently, they are predisposed to put their faith in the future and in others. They become psychologically and intellectually equipped to imagine a future with other people, in which they undertake communal projects and attain important goals.

6. Analyzing Sources

Teenagers need support  to cope with and analyze disinformation and deception online. they should work on developing critical reading and browsing habits and learn to identify different kinds of deceptive reasoning. families can practice analyzing false or misleading information together. .

By the age of 13, young people likely already have significant experience navigating the internet. They have all made extensive use of a variety of websites in order to find answers to their questions or to help with papers and schoolwork.

The internet has democratized the transmission of information, allowing anyone and everyone to put forward their ideas, opinions, or hypotheses on multiple online platforms. People usually post things online in an affirmative style which presents any given statement, no matter how dubious or speculative, as a well-known fact.  

People’s personal blogs, companies’ promotional lifestyle websites, and free encyclopedias all feature articles on complex subjects, almost always with content that has not been vetted by any experts,  whose critical thinking skills and reasoning would be invaluable.

It seems that everyone—or almost everyone—has the tendency to grant at least some level of truth to everything they find online, especially if the site looks credible and its language is elegant. The same gullibility often applies to what we see on television or read in newspapers.

It is important to make young people aware of the phenomenon of “fake news” and to give them concrete proof of the great deal of false—even outrageous—information online. 

For example, it is possible to find videos claiming to prove that NASA’s moon landing was staged . Debunking these types of conspiracy theories, with the help of parents and educators, can be a useful exercise for students. As can discussing what makes certain sources reliable or unreliable.

For example, students could be shown a factual documentary on the moon landing and a video claiming the moon landing was faked and then asked to work out which one is false

In order to do this, they must use their logical knowledge to see if any false presumptions have been made. They must also ask themselves who made and commented in the videos. What is this person’s reputation? What are their professional qualifications? Has the document’s credibility been discussed in any forums?

Debunking these types of conspiracy theories, with the help of parents and educators, can be a useful exercise for students.

In analyzing these and similar sources, we will arrive at one of five possible situations:

An author has good intentions but his or her reasoning is flawed. The author draws unsubstantiated conclusions from trustworthy information. For example, we have proof that certain particles came out of thin air and did not evolve from anything. Some wrongly conclude that this proves the existence of God, since only God could create something from nothing. This information is true, but the reasoning is false, and the conclusion therefore does not follow. The solution involves the relationship between energy and mass in the equation E = mc 2 . In empty space, even the smallest amount of heat can cause spontaneous conversions of pure energy into matter.

An author has good intentions and reasons well, but uses false information. Here, the author can come to false conclusions, even if he or she reasons impeccably. For example, one could conclude that the acceleration of an object, induced by gravitational force, is dependent on its mass because if one drops a rock and a feather from a balcony, the rock will hit the ground before the feather. Here, the problem lies with the initial information, which is erroneous because it does not take the role of air resistance into account. The observation on which the argument is based is thus incorrect in this case, as is the conclusion. In reality, in a vacuum, the feather and the rock would reach the ground at exactly the same time.

It could be that the hypotheses and baseline observations, as well as the arguments drawn from it, are all incorrect. A false conclusion is likely to result.

Authors could be giving out false information intentionally with the aim of selling a product; harming another individual, group, or country; spreading a rumor to make themselves feel important; or sadistically causing mental anguish to others for their own enjoyment.

An author intends to get a point across by using an argument which appears to comply with logical reasoning but which actually contains one or more inferential leaps , deliberately introduced in order to prove that the conclusion is objective because it stems from rigorous thinking. Sophistry and paralogisms arise from this sort of trickery.

It is very important to expose adolescents to these five possible kinds of lies or deception, as well as to reflect on how to identify them by analyzing authors’ arguments and questioning the hypotheses or observations at the root of their arguments and their likely intentions, given the message’s context. For example, in an advertising context, we can understand that car manufacturers might benefit from lying about the amount of pollution produced by the vehicle they sell.

Nasreddin’s Sophisms

Paralogisms, 7. the critical mind, genuine critical thinking requires background knowledge. parents should help their children acquire broad and deep knowledge so they have the confidence and ability to call sources into question and avoid an unreflective acceptance of authority..

General knowledge is also a powerful tool for staying critical and skeptical in the face of this influx of information. It allows one to reconcile information and to check whether new data seems consistent with what they already know.

For example, if one were trying to evaluate arguments about how to address the recession caused by the 2008 global financial crisis, it would be useful to know the history of efforts to boost economic growth through government spending,  especially those undertaken during the Great Depression of the 1930s . Citizens versed in this history will be far better equipped to evaluate and criticize the proposals put forward by politicians and economists in their own time.

Having general knowledge also means that one does not hold even the most reliable sources sacred, knowing that careful thought often undermines received wisdom.

For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity called Newton’s law of universal gravitation into question, even though Newton’s law had apparently been confirmed by a wealth of experiments and observations. Einstein’s general knowledge and his independent way of thinking allowed him to postulate that gravity was not simply a force but a warping of space-time in the vicinity of stars. Since then, independent observational astronomical predictions have always supported the theory of general relativity.

Treating certain sources as sacred can be as dangerous as uncritically accepting everything that comes from the internet or elsewhere. The same phenomenon is involved when religious texts are interpreted as legitimizing violence or intolerance.

The interpretation—as well as the cultural, social, geographical, and historical contextualization—of a piece of information is indispensable to the formation of a critical mind. But critical thinking is difficult. It takes training, as well as background knowledge, to determine the reliability of a source, and this determination can never be definitive or certain.

These examples show that if we are responsible for educating adolescents on the verification of sources, we must be careful not to give permanent, definitive credit to any piece of information or knowledge, even if it comes from a seemingly very reliable source. Critical thinking, provided that it does not lead to permanent doubt or paranoia, is truly a way of life, facilitating progress and freedom.

Fact-Checking

Verifying sources, 8. critical thinking and progress, critical thinking can help children not only learn to analyze the world around them, but act to try to change it. good critical thinking can foster productive interests, deeper engagement with social problems, and the attitudes of good citizenship. in this way critical thinking is vital to social progress..

A goal (or a project or “dream”) is the meeting of, on the one hand, an idea born out of a need or desire and, on the other, a method—an “algorithm” for bringing the idea into reality. But these two dimensions to every goal are, in fact, two sides of the same coin, two facets of creativity. 

As we have seen, the spark for critical thinking comes from self-esteem and unconditional love. This energy is indispensable to living with both a sense of joy and, at the same time, a continual dissatisfaction with the status quo. Taking joy in life is necessary to prevent this dissatisfaction from degenerating into depression or other pathologies. This joy provides the energy needed to turn dissatisfaction into ideas and dreams of change. 

But in order for an idea to turn into a project capable of changing the world, both a methodology and logical, communicative rigor are required. These allow a large number of people to understand a problem in the same terms and gear themselves toward the same objectives. Without these tools, efforts at problem-solving tend to devolve into emotionalism or factionalism.

Methodological rigor is rooted in critical reasoning. 

An education in critical thinking and reasoning is the best way to ensure a child can access goal-oriented thinking. A goal, much like the kind of formal logic we can exercise from the ages of 13 to 15, transforms the possible into the tangible. 

Goal-oriented thinking leads children in their adolescence to join or set up active groups or associations. Activity in such groups requires skills in both logic and communication, and it tends to support their further development. It pushes those undertaking such projects to strike a balance between asserting themselves and listening to others—between critiquing and taking what others say on board. 

In this sens e, critical thinking and the drive it inspires to undertake projects can be a kind of citizenship training. To rigorously and plainly critique a complex system (whether it be political, scientific, or philosophical, theological) is always to act as a citizen. It is beneficial to all.

Critical thinking not only enables students to reach their intellectual potential; it can also help them find purpose and, through purpose, happiness.

In this way critical thinking not only enables students to reach their intellectual potential; it can also help them find purpose and, through purpose, happiness. And, ultimately, it can help foster progress and social cohesion through cooperative action.

These links between critical thinking, undertaking projects, and citizenship should further encourage parents and educators to guide children toward this spirit of joyful dissatisfaction, as well as toward logical reasoning and the art of arguing.

If this mindset is acquired, teenagers won’t need pressure from above to take action as citizens or to participate in projects for social change that are bigger than themselves. There always lies the risk that when parents mandate this kind of participation as a kind of chore, children will reject it out of principle.

Instead of hoping their children will swallow whole what is offered them, parents should encourage them to seek the truth —to learn to reason and argue. Those around them, and society as a whole, will benefit from their skills, their independence, and their spirit.

Case Study 1

The concepts of intension and extension.

B eginning at around 13, students can begin formalizing their reasoning using intensional definitions. These formal definitions, which are internal to concepts themselves, rather than drawn from experience, can open up new avenues for reasoning and lead to new kinds of arguments. 

Consider the following scenario:

During a presidential election campaign, 14-year-old Lea defends a candidate who, in her eyes, is the only one worth voting for. She explains her candidate’s platform to her friends around the table at lunch in the school cafeteria and says how she wishes she already had the right to vote and that she begged her parents to vote on her behalf.

Lea’s arguments seem to have convinced her friends, but Anna, sitting at one end of the table, interjects: ″Who cares? As my parents say, all presidents are liars! I’m never going to vote.”

The other girls and boys present agree loudly. A surprised Lea tries to think of a comeback, but can’t think of what to say.

The bell rings. Everyone gets up to go back to class.

When she gets home after school, Lea tells her mother about the scene at lunch and asks her opinion: ″What would you have said to Anna?”

If you were Lea’s mother, how would you have replied? How can you use reason to respond to Anna’s argument, which seems to be an argument from authority ?

There are two ways to determine whether all presidents are liars or not:

Extensional method: Research the history of presidential elections, and compare the promises made by candidates to their actions after being elected. This method will allow you to determine whether all presidents over the course of history have lied. Perhaps they all have lied. But even in this case, Anna’s argument would be valid but only up to the present day , since one cannot predict the future and, therefore, what a new president will do. Perhaps Lea could then defend her favored candidate by arguing that, once elected, he or she will be different.

Intensional method: Research political science and show that the electoral system and certain institutions pressure candidates to lie in order to get elected and that this is considered the “rules of the game.” If this can be demonstrated, it would be a valid pattern for the past and the future. In this hypothesis, Anna’s argument will be valid for the present and the future (so long as the same institutions remain in effect). Notice, however, that this method gives Lea an opportunity for more subtle reasoning. All presidents may end up making false promises or misleading the public on certain points, but we can distinguish between deliberate, malicious lies and those that arise from the pressures of the office. This would allow her to poke holes in Anna’s rationale for not voting, since certain candidates may still be more honest than others.

Case Study 2

Flawed reasoning.

Use these examples of flawed reasoning to introduce logical vocabulary and help your children identify flawed reasoning  and how to identify flaws in an argument.. More definitions and basic concepts can be found here .

The examples are based on famous example of deductive reasoning attributed to Aristotle. In the exercises, Aristotle’s example is distorted in various ways, either using false information or faulty reasoning. Challenge your children to identify exactly why these arguments fail. 

Here are some definitions of the terms used below: 

Premises are the statements or information on which an argument is based (in these cases, the first two lines). 

The conclusion (the third line in these examples) is the statement drawn from the premises.

When an argument is valid , that means its conclusion follows logically from its premises.

When an argument is sound , that means it is both valid and based on premises that are true, meaning its conclusion is also true.

These examples can help students to break up reasoning into logical steps, make the logical steps of an argument explicit to themselves, and identify where reasoning breaks down. Critical thinking must enable us to detect logical errors and to recognize whether they lead us to false conclusions. Notice, however, that flawed reasoning does not guarantee a false conclusion. 

Aristotle’s Reasoning

“All human beings are mortal. Socrates is a human being. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.”

The premises are true, the reasoning is valid, and the conclusion is, as a result, true.

All human beings are women. Socrates is a human being. Therefore, Socrates is a woman.

One of the premises is false, the reasoning is valid, but the conclusion is false.

Half the human race is female. Socrates is a human being. Therefore, Socrates is female.

The premises are true, but the reasoning is invalid, and the conclusion is false.

Half the human race is male. Socrates is a human being. Therefore, Socrates is male.

The premises are true, the reasoning is invalid, but the conclusion is true.

Case Study 3

Peer pressure emerges in adolescent social groups as children attempt to assert independence from their parents and build their own identity through involvement in peer groups. This can lead to a number of paradoxical problems as children are pulled between an emerging sense of self and a need to belong. Even as their children seek to separate, parents can offer them help and support in working through some of these conflicts. 

Consider this scenario:

Twelve-year-old David has just entered sixth grade at a big middle school in the city. He is a bit lost and finds a group of boys his age to spend time with during class and at recess. They all get to know each other over the next few weeks.

At the end of October, one of the boys suggests that they draw a big skull and crossbones on their backpacks in permanent marker to show that they belong to the group. Within a few days, all of the boys in the group have proudly drawn a skull and crossbones onto the front of their backpacks— everyone, that is, except David. He really likes his backpack. He picked it out himself and his parents bought it for him for the new school year. Furthermore, he has never had an affinity for skeletons, and skulls and crossbones hold no special meaning for him.

When the group reunites in the playground one Friday morning, one of the boys goes over to David and threatens him, saying, “If you don’t draw a skull and crossbones on your backpack, you’re out of the group!” The other children back the mean kid up.

Over the weekend, David is faced with a dilemma. He can either keep his backpack the way he likes it, even if that means being excluded from the group, or draw a skull and crossbones on it to show that he belongs to the group.

On Sunday night, he decides to talk to his parents about the situation. If you were in their place, what advice would you give him?

At dinner, his father offers him some advice:

″David, you shouldn’t see this as a problem with only two solutions. Just tell your friends that you don’t like either option and that you have another idea.”

″That won’t work. They told me that it had to be one way or the other,” replies David.

″Well, you should at least give it a try,” suggests his mother. “Tell them that you really like being part of the group and that you like them as friends, but that you don’t want to ruin your new backpack by drawing on it. Tell them that, in a group, everyone should have their freedom and that you shouldn’t have to do the same thing as everyone else all the time. Ask them to let you stay in their group, which means a lot to you, without having to do something you don’t want to. That’s a third solution.”

In this situation, the group of boys want David to show he’s part of the group by adopting a common code. David is under pressure to comply and must make a decision. The easiest solution for David would be to succumb to peer pressure. He could also stand his ground and refuse, but this would probably cause him pain since he would have to deal with the group’s disapproval and possible exclusion.

The group does not tolerate non-conformity since it threatens its existence. Eventually, however, resisting peer pressure could play in David’s favor, as his show of independence could earn him the respect of the other group members and thereby bolster his self-esteem.

There is no ″right decision.” Everything depends on David’s level of self-esteem, which will determine his capacity to stand firm in the face of the consequences of his choices.

Case Study 4

Nasreddin, a very famous figure in the Arab Muslim world, was the author of often absurd stories. Families enjoy reading his stories together and refuting his biased reasoning, which is designed to sharpen our critical thinking skills and ability to foil sophistry. Identifying the flaws in Nasreddin’s reasoning is a useful logic game and a good way to introduce logical concepts. Challenge your children to show where Nasreddin goes wrong, and come up with equivalent examples from current events or everyday life that involve the same flawed reasoning.

Very early one morning, Nasreddin was up sowing salt all around his house.

“What on earth are you doing with all that salt, Nasreddin?” asked his neighbor.

“I’m putting it around my house to ward off tigers.”

“But there aren’t any tigers here.”

“Well then, that’s proof that the salt worked!”

The Moon and the Sun

One day, Nasreddin was asked:

“Tell us, Nasreddin, which is more important: the sun or the moon?”

“The moon, of course,” he replied immediately.

“Because the moon appears at night, and that’s when we need light most.”

The Power of Age

Nasreddin arrived at a café one day, looking proud and happy.

“Hey, Nasreddin,” his friends called to him. “You look as if you’ve just found treasure.”

“Even better, even better,” he replied. “I am 70 and I have just discovered that I am still as strong as I was when I was 20.”

“And how did you discover that?”

“Simple! You see that huge rock in front of my house? Well, when I was 20, I couldn’t move it.

“Today, I tried again and I still can’t move it, just like when I was 20.”

Case Study 5

Paralogisms are fallacious arguments that appeal to evidence that is misleading, partial, or irrelevant.  Below are some of the main strategies deployed in paralogisms. Ask you children to explain how the statements distort the facts or attempt to deceptively influence an audience. Use the paralogism examples as a starting point for discussing other examples in public life, advertising, or everyday conversation.

Paralogism Exercise #1

Spot the paralogisms in the following statements and explain why the reasoning is flawed. 

″If smoking were bad for your health, it would be banned. Smoking is not banned. Therefore, smoking is not bad for your health.”

″If I am sick, I go see the doctor. I am not going to see the doctor. Therefore, I am not sick.”

″Intensive farming allows us to feed all human beings. Organic farming is not intensive farming. Therefore, organic farming will not allow us to feed all human beings.”

Paralogism Exercise #2

Three false dilemmas are presented below. Why are these apparent dilemmas not real dilemmas?

A close friend who is going to jump into a freezing lake on New Year’s Eve says, “A real friend wouldn’t let me do this alone.”

The night before election day, a candidate for office says, “It’s me or chaos.”

A slogan in an advertisement for Sneakie sports shoes reads, “Cool people wear Sneakies.”

Paralogism Exercise #3

Often biased or flawed reasoning uses false generalizations. How can we contradict the following statements?

Upon hearing that a  politician is being investigated for tax fraud: “See? All politicians are corrupt.”

“Hypnosis works for giving up smoking. My brother managed to quit that way.”

“Social media is the best way to find love. Several of my friends met their partners that way.”

Paralogism Exercise #4

Beware of an “argument from authority,” especially those circulating online.

″Many scientists dispute the global warming phenomenon.” Who are these “scientists”? On which scientific studies have they based their opinions? Do they have personal, political, or economic connections with people or organizations that could benefit from challenging global warming? It is important to ask oneself all of these questions before accepting an argument.

Paralogism Exercise #5

Arguments based on numbers:

″This singer’s video already has 500,000 views online.”  What does this say about the quality of their music?

″X93 – the latest phone, already owned by 2,000,000 people worldwide.”  Does this mean that this device would suit my needs? Is this an indicator of its quality?

Paralogism Exercise #6

Arguments based on fear:

″You say that you’re against the death penalty, but murder will be much more common if we abolish it as a deterrent.”

Case Study 6

Several media companies offer fact-checking services. It is beneficial to consult them with teenagers and to pose questions about the ways in which media can distort the truth. These services can offer insight into the techniques various organizations and bad actors use to deceive audiences, as well as into the bias that can skew the information put out by various news organizations. Discussing these examples with your children get help raise awareness of the various ploys used to manipulate readers and viewers, and help them hone their analytical and critical skills.

Here are links to some trustworthy fact-checking sites: Politifact   |   Snopes  |    FactCheck.org  |    Poynter Institute

Examining the false stories fact-checked by these organization can be a helpful exercise. Here is an example of a false story fact-checked by Snopes:

Understanding examples like these can give students insight into techniques fake news sites use to hook and deceive an audience. Here, for example, the violent image may grab viewers’ attention and cause them to let their critical guard now. Attaching the fake story to a genuine news item (Samsung’s smartphone recall) also makes readers more likely to believe and share the false story, since it appears like a development in an ongoing story.

Student’s can also learn from the fact-checkers’ analysis. Here, they track down the original photos to show how the fake site has repurposed them, and they dig into the website reputation and background.

Researchers Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew recommend teaching students to navigate the internet more like fact-checkers. Students, they write, tend to “read vertically , evaluating online articles as if they were printed news stories.” Fact checkers, on the other hand, “read laterally , jumping off the original page, opening up a new tab, Googling the name of the organization or its president.”

Fact-checkers, Wineburg and McGrew write, are also less inclined to trust a website’s own description of its mission. They look for outside evidence from multiple sources to confirm or refute the website’s claims. And they don’t get hooked by enticing language or images, instead reading through a whole page of search results or information before deciding reflectively what links to follow or where else to look.

Finding good information online — and steering clear of bad information—are skills that can be taught and learned. They are increasingly vital at a time where multiple interests are leveraging the internet to attempt to monopolize our attention and shape our beliefs.

Case Study 7

Young people receive information from everywhere (social media, emails, texts, newspapers, television, online videos). Given the wealth of information coming in, much of it coming through or recommended by friends whose judgment and endorsement we are inclined to trust, it is easy to passively accept what we see or read. Young people should learn through examples how to resist this tendency and how to conduct thorough analyses of the media they are exposed to everyday.

It is important for parents to accompany them in conducting this sort of analysis so they can teach them how to critically evaluate these sources of information and how to avoid being misled. Below is a set of questions that you can apply to news sources with your children. They can be applied to any media source (the internet, printed media, TV/radio, etc.). We’ve divided these sets of questions into two sections: questioning the source and questioning the content.

1. Questioning the Source

• What is the source? Is it reliable? 

It is often possible to cast doubt on a source simply by looking at surface features. There are numerous fake news websites with unusual names or URLs (like, for example, worldnewsdailyreport.com) that should tip readers off to their unreliability. In addition, if a website looks poorly designed and managed, contains typos or formatting errors, this is also an important indicator that it is likely unreliable, if not intentionally false. Fake news also may also come under more plausible publication names, like, for example, the “Denver Guardian,” and with more convincing design. A simple internet search can usually bring up information from credible sources alerting the reader to the fraudulent nature of the source. Here is a list of unreliable news sources from Factcheck.org. With your child, practice determining the reliability of different kinds of information.

Who owns the source? Is the content sponsored?

When evaluating a source, it is also possible to do research into details about the source, such as who owns the source or who is funding the content or supporting it via advertising. It is often possible this way to identify potential biases or attempts to influence readers that may not be immediately clear at a first reading. Reliable sources may also sell space in their publications or websites to sponsors, who have obvious interests in what information is presented and the slant with which it is presented. See for example this “ China Daily ” paid post in the New York Times, which is placed on the Times website by Chinese state media. Exploring how and why information like this is presented can be a good learning experience. It is also useful to discuss how sponsored content is marked on this and other websites.

• Who is the author of the content? What are their credentials? What possible biases may they have?

In addition to asking questions about publications, it is important to know who has written a given article or op-ed , what their reasons for doing so may be, and what expertise they have in the given area. Doing so can help determine the reliability of the information offered, the possible slants or biases with which the information is presented, and any financial or other interest the writer may have in the matter discussed. Most reliable websites will offer at least some of an opinion writer’s background, but an internet search can often return more detailed information. It is also important to help students recognize that an editorial author’s potential biases do not necessarily render the content absolutely unreliable. Critical thinking should not lead to knee-jerk rejection of all potentially biased opinions. Rather, a fair-minded independent thinker takes potential bias into account in evaluating content, weighing it along with other factors, like the strength of the argument and the evidence put forward.

2. Questioning the Content

• What type of content is being offered? What is the issue under discussion?

Before we embark on an analysis of the content of a given source, it is important to identify what type of content is being offered. The way we approach analyzing an advertisement will be very different from the way we analyze a news story or an opinion piece. It’s also important that students be able to identify when a particular source is purposefully blurring the lines between categories. For example, so-called “advertorials” can disguise advertising or promotion in the guise of opinion pieces or feature articles. News stories may likewise present information in a particular misleading or biased manner, trying to persuade the reader of something, but without making it clear that they are actually offering an opinion, not simply news.

• What sources are drawn on for the information or argument given? Are they reliable?

Even when we are satisfied that a source we are reading is generally reliable, it is worthwhile to pay attention to its own sources of information. If a particular piece of content cites facts without providing sources there is good reason to question the information. Moreover, students should get in the habit of following links and citations to verify that the secondary information comes from a reliable source and that the original content is characterizing it accurately.

• What are the main arguments being offered? Are they strong and sound? Are they consistent with each other?

Media sources use a variety of means to try to convince the audience of a particular point or point of view. It is important to train ourselves to be conscious of what these means are and whether they are valid. If an article or video simply relies on emotional reactions or strong images to prove its point, without trying to put forward an argument, we should be skeptical. On the other hand, if there is an argument presented, we should begin training children to break it down and analyze it. Parents and their children can practice breaking down the argument into premises and conclusions, evaluating whether the evidence for the premises is strong and the conclusions follow rationally from them.

• How might one argue against the position put forward?

Another important exercise to carry out, even if you generally agree with a position put forward, is to ask how it might be opposed. This can help identify weak points in the argument and show where evidence, even if it’s reliable, may not fully support the point of view being put forward. To this end, it can be helpful to research articles with opposing points of view, but which rely on the same set of facts. Discuss the merits of each article and how you would argue for and against each of them. 

Complete the quiz to review important points in the guide.

• The stage when children are able to study calculus and other college-level math.
• The stage when children can begin to grasp and manipulate abstract ideas.
• The stage when children start dressing more elegantly.
• The stage when children begin arguing more persuasively.
• Parents can go over children’s essays and other schoolwork closely and dispute their reasoning.
• Parents can enroll their children in college exam prep courses as early as possible.
• Parents can use everyday examples to demonstrate the meanings of terms like proposition, contradiction, and validity.
• Parents can work on improving their own understanding of logic.
• Parents can discuss logical fallacies in popular media or current events with their children.
• The intension is the role a concept plays in logic; the extension is its role in everyday life.
• The intension is a formal definition of the concept; the extension is a group of examples coming under the concept.
• The intension is how the concept is used; the extension is a formal definition of the concept.
• The intension is a narrow definition of the concept; the extension is a broader definition.
• Critical thinking allows them to react thoughtfully to social pressure and assert their independence from friend groups when appropriate.
• Critical thinking gives them tools to show their superiority to their peers and gain social esteem.
• As crtical thinkers, they will be more likely to concentrate on their studies and ignore social life and their own individuality.
• As critical thinkers, they will be better equipped to manipulate other people and make their way to the top of social circles.
• Get into shouting matches with them. They need to see that their mistakes have consequences.
• Walk away. Teenagers need to learn that overheated opinions and conversations will get them nowhere.
• Engage them in arguments and challenge them to improve their criticisms (if they’re warranted). They’ll learn to argue with more moderation and subtlety.
• Bring in a teacher or other adult authority figure to mediate. The parent-child relationship is too emotionally charged for productive arguments.
• Who owns the source? Or who is supporting the content? What interests might they have?
• What do other reliable sources say about the issue under discussion?
• Is the content meant to be news or opinion?
• Does the content’s impact rely on emotional language or sensationalistic images?
• Was the author educated at a prestigious college?
• The study of planetary orbits
• A deceptive or misleading argument
• The merging of two arguments into one
• A convincing counterargument

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critical thinking

Definition of critical thinking

Examples of critical thinking in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'critical thinking.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1815, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Dictionary Entries Near critical thinking

critical temperature

critical value

Cite this Entry

“Critical thinking.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/critical%20thinking. Accessed 2 Sep. 2024.

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