My dad is pretty brilliant. I mean, not only did he reference a nobel prize winner 6 years before she won, he gives some pretty good advice. Advice to a college freshman circa 2001, for what it's worth:
Mommy described your brunch with the Jesuits, and how you commented to her on how much I would have enjoyed it. I am sure that I would have. Notwithstanding the fact that I wasn’t there, if your “Jebes” are anything like mine were, I suspect that the term “critical thinking” may have worked its way into the conversation. It is a skill and a tool which is among the most valuable that the Society of Jesus may pass on to you in the years ahead. It is also the skill that will broaden and enrich the full range of your educational experiences, and quite likely be one of the critical points of differentiation that you will bring to every subsequent opportunity in your life, whether it is a poetry reading or a job interview. It will color both your spoken and written words, and it will help you keep your own compass set to whatever course you decide is your personal “true north”.
I’ve long been fascinated by the skill; not only to the extent of my own inability to master it despite years of striving, but more because I realized that it is a life long pursuit and it is a skill that has to be consciously acquired. It also had so much less to do with “being smart” than I had originally supposed. I came to know so many “truly brilliant people”, who could digest or regurgitate volumes, but who literally seemed to have failed to learn how to think. It is your ability to THINK, to develop your skills as a “critical thinker” that is so necessary to your life long process of becoming a full and caring person.
I read in an article a description of a critical thinker as a person that is “habitually inquisitive, well informed, trustful of reason, open minded, flexible, fair minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the circumstances of the inquiry permit.” (Emphasis added).
People who are good critical thinkers have the ability to interpret, analyze, evaluate, explain and infer reasonable conclusions from a given set of “facts”. Critical thinkers are those who always want to ask “why” or “how” or most importantly, “what if”.
The most important ~and hence the most difficult ~ aspect of being an accomplished thinker is to be able to develop and then effectively employ those rarest of skills: Self Assessment and Self Correction. Can you honestly examine your views on some complex or controversial issue of the moment, while at the same time being attuned to the impact on your thinking of you own self interest or personal bias? Do you have the guts to go back and reconsider a judgment or interpretation that you were sure was correct AND THEN, revise your conclusions because of new information or the realization that you failed to properly weight the importance of some variable? Can you learn to say, based on the merits of reason and rhetoric, that “I’ve changed my mind” or “I was wrong in my earlier conclusions”?
When the desire to get it right (to harken to your personal true north) overcomes the pride or arrogance that too often comes with formal edumacation (all those truly brilliant people I referred to earlier who never learn to incorporate self assessment or self correction into their thought processes), then you will be earning your membership in a truly prestigious and selective club; the Critical Thinker.
As long as people have goals and dreams and are required to judge how best to accomplish them, critical thinking will be required. As long as people want honest discourse about what is true and what to believe and why, critical thinking will be required. Critical thinking should be a pervasive element of your life and therefore it must be a pervasive element of your “education”.
Let me say a couple of words about your “education” Very few people actually and actively seek knowledge in this world. Lot’s of folks seek and reflect back the “facts” of a given course or area of study, but that’s not the same. To really seek knowledge is to consciously walk into the maelstrom, accepting that sometimes to “truly ask” risks getting an answer that may eviscerate the question and perhaps the questioner as well!! Take the risk! Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, was quoted as saying “if you want to be twice as successful in life—double your failure rate. I’ve modified Watson’s maxim slightly to make it my own as “Make all the mistakes you can in life, just make a focused and conscious effort not to make the same mistake twice”. (In point of fact, you will make some of the same mistakes again, but the point here is to try hard!!) ” Do Not Be Afraid to Fail!
Make sure you get your EDUCATION. Demand it. Mommy an I aren’t forking over the 35 grand for you to check off a bunch of courses or get some technical training or professional preparation. Trust me, the way the world works today, anybody who looks at their college experience that way will find out (rudely) that their job oriented training or professional preparation will be stale dated 1 year from the day they graduate.
We’re spending the money, and happily. Do you know why? To LIBERATE you. To liberate you from your parents (did I really just say that??!!). To liberate your thoughts from any preconceived restraints and to be fully open to possibilities. To liberate you from your professors. That’s right, your professors. Because the really good ones will push you out and beyond, forcing you to excel on your own. To go beyond the then “current standard” and raise the bar to make your own important and unique contribution to some area of knowledge, or a specific area of interest, or to society in general, or just to and for yourself.
So go for it!! You’re ready. Not because of where you are but because of who you are. You’ve got an incredible foundation on which to build, a strong and enduring one. Trust in it and build on it. That’s why critical thinking is such an amazing and powerful tool. Because it requires the foundation first. Without the foundation there is no morality to filter the critical thinking. The ethical use of critical thinking is not a “given”. It is determined solely by the character, integrity and the principles of the person doing the thinking! That is why it is such a powerful tool for a person like you whose life and decisions are guided by a well developed infrastructure of commitment and values.
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