The lost art of critical thinking
The best engineer I’ve ever met had nothing more than a 5th grade “education.”
How is that even possible? Well, it’s simple. But let’s first go back to the education revolution between 1950 and 1990. The percentage of us adults that graduated high school and college tripled and quadrupled, respectively. In essence, we transitioned from a self-educated and family-educated society to a formally educated society.
In a lot of ways, that transition was a good thing, but there were also some negative side effects of the push for mass formal education - namely, the lack of critical thinking. I know some of you will argue that schools and colleges teach critical thinking, but I disagree in the majority of the cases. Here’s the nuance.
Theoretical critical thinking and practical critical thinking are dramatically different animals.
Theoretical critical thinking means that we can philosophize about a solution on paper and maybe even run a small study to prove our results. On the other hand, practical critical thinking involves solving real problems in real life. This piece of the puzzle is fading quickly.
So why should you care about any of this? First, if you’re a parent, it’s no longer the family farm or family business that’s teaching kids practical critical thinking skills. And our schools just aren’t equipped or designed to do it. This begs the question…
“What are you doing to teach your kids practical critical thinking skills?”
You see, if our kids don’t understand critical thinking, they will never be able to solve the real problems in their life. The things I call “gray decisions.” Important things like:
Should I go to college?
Who should I marry?
What career path should I take?
How do I comfort my best friend that just lost their mother?
The right answer to each of those questions comes directly from practical critical thinking.
We’ve forgotten how to do it because we’ve filled our free time with things that require no thought. Things like more sports, Netflix, podcasts, board games, Snapchat, Instagram Stories, etc.
It’s not that ANY of those things are innately bad. It’s just about the tradeoff we make when we continually choose those things over silence.
There’s real power in sitting quietly in your own head. And that power is being lost on not just one generation, but many. For example…
You could be sitting quietly inside your head right now… but you’re on the internet… reading a post about sitting quietly inside your head.
If there’s one thing I urge you to do today it is this:
Set a timer for 3 minutes.
Turn off all your notifications on your phone.
Put down all your electronics (including your TV and radio).
Simply sit inside your own mind for that 3 minutes. Pay attention to where your mind goes and where your thoughts wander.
Challenge your family to do the same. This is the first step in our kids learning to think critically again.
I know this won’t be my most popular post. In fact, I know most of you won’t even make it to the end. This stuff isn’t rocket science. It’s not flashy. It’s not Kardashian enough for the modern world. But I also know that it works. I know that it’s the difference between a world that digs themselves deeper holes and one that find solutions that could never be found by staring at a screen.
It’s time to get back to silence.
P.S. Thanks, Grandpap Dillow… for showing me what a true engineer looks like. I miss you like crazy…