Without critical thinking, how can we really live a meaningful life? We need this skill to self-reflect and justify our ways of life and opinions. Critical thinking provides us with the tools to evaluate ourselves in the way that we need to. Over the years I have done well at taking apart my life to evaluate it in order to be a more insightful husband, father, leader, or person. But one of my greatest weaknesses is being a critical thinker when it comes to higher education. So far, I have been able to avoid it, even as I worked on my master\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n
After reading The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking<\/em>, I now realize, my avoidance is actually a flaw in my character! Ouch! According to Linda Elder\u2019s six stages of Critical Thinking Development, I am presently at the bottom. I would be considered an Unreflective Thinker (unaware of significant problems in my thinking) p. 6. In the past I would easily comment on posts that I agreed with just because it was easy and because I did not want any push back from the person I was replying to. By being an uncritical thinker, I am actually communicating to others, \u201cI do not care about your development as a writer and\/or person\u201d It hurts to write this but it is true since I have been failing to honestly and critically engage with posts that I might disagree with or could at least challenge the writer to think in a different way. The bottom line in critical thinking is to help the writer to improve his or her thought process. Since this has been a glaring weakness in my life, I am committing to learning and growing in this area by raising vital questions through my new found intellectual courage.<\/p>\n Speaking of intellectual courage, for the past 35 years I have been reading 40 to 90 books a year, which means I do have much to say because of my reading. I love reading. It is an addiction. But all my life, I have read every single word in every book. I remember Jason Clark saying during orientation, \u201cDo not read every word in a book.\u201d There have been many times I read every word in a book just because I thought skimming and superficial reading are bad for understanding. \u00a0Now, I need to learn the art of inspectional reading. Due to time constraints, I am sure I will really like inspectional reading.<\/p>\n Since I read much, I also take many notes, but I do not have a good note taking system. As I look at my files on my desktop, I see one folder that reads, \u201cTrauma.\u201d Unfortunately, everything about trauma is in that folder and it takes a while to find what I am really looking for. This is why I just started using Obsidian to store and organize notes and pictures for my blogs. I am already seeing a difference in my organization of my desktop files.<\/p>\n Obsidian will be very helpful as I write my essays, which is another weak area in my life. I tend to have lots of information, but my challenge is organizing it in an understandable and logical format for my readers.<\/p>\n I hope to develop better skills in every area. That should be easy since my skills are at the bottom. But, the perfectionist in me will work extremely hard to develop my critical thinking skills. Also, reading less in a book is actually more, so I will work hard at understanding a book after reading it for about 60 minutes. I will also read other posts to learn from my wise classmates. All of this is easier said than done, and I truly believe this challenge will be worth it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Without critical thinking, how can we really live a meaningful life? We need this skill to self-reflect and justify our ways of life and opinions. Critical thinking provides us with the tools to evaluate ourselves in the way that we need to. Over the years I have done well at taking apart my life to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2502,679],"class_list":["post-30135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp2","tag-richard-paul-and-linder-elders-book","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30135"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30246,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30135\/revisions\/30246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}