GEN 499 Week 4 Discussion Response

GEN 499 Week 4 Discussion 1 Elements of Critical Thinking

Respond to Peers: Review your classmates’ posts, and respond to two of your peers. When responding to your classmates, please provide feedback on their examples of good and poor critical thinking skills. Discuss additional ways one can think more critically. Each participation post should be a minimum of 75 words.

Reply to Deena White post

Explain at least five elements of critical thinking that you found in the reading material.

1. Critical thinking requires the applicable knowledge to allow reasonable assessment. Bailin, Case, Coombs, and Daniels state this is part of “an understanding of the various principles which govern good thinking in particular areas, and many of these are domain specific” (1999, p. 272).

2. Critical thinking requires a willingness and desire to think critically. Bailin, et al. define this as a critical spirit (1999).

3. Critical thinking requires the ability to separate facts from fiction and determine relevance.

4. Critical thinking requires the ability to be objective as well as a willingness to change their position when the arguments do not support their previous position (Plenener, 2014).

5. Critical thinking requires the ability to hypothesize and predict outcomes (Bailin, et al., 1999).

Good Critical Thinking Example: Summarize the content and explain why you think it demonstrates good critical thinking skills.

          In her article on Ebola, Tara Smith looks at the need for education across multiple disciplines to fully understand the Ebola outbreak that began in 2014 in the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. (2015). Smith walks us down her critical thinking path across the topics of virology, epidemiology, anthropology, history, communication, ethics, and policy, demonstrating the connection between each area and why an understanding of their role is necessary (2015). Each of these disciplines contributes information vital to both understanding the Ebola outbreak and to avoiding or reducing the impact of future outbreaks. Factors such as the history of the colonization of these countries, the poverty level they experience, their fear of modern healthcare and why, etc. are all necessary to learn to create a complete understanding of what happened, why, and how to move forward. This was an excellent article and I would highly recommend the short read.

Poor Critical Thinking Example: Summarize the content and explain why you think it demonstrates the absence of good, critical thinking skills.

          Some old wives’ tales can be prime examples of a lack of critical thinking skills. In a Wonder of the Day article on old wives’ tales the author looks at many of the more popular tales and separates any validity from faulty critical thinking. One perfect example is the old wives’ tale that carrots are good for vision because you never see rabbits wearing glasses (What is an Old Wives’ Tale?, n.d.). I realize this is a silly tale but it is a good example of poor critical thinking. The idea is that the vitamin A contained in carrots improves vision. The first premise is that carrots contain vitamin A; true. The second premise is that vitamin A is good for your eyes; again, true. The third premise is where the critical thinking goes astray; Vitamin A improves vision; false. While I am no expert I do know that I am nearsighted not because of a lack of vitamin A but due to the shape of various surfaces of my eye. Once the third premise is proven false the entire conclusion becomes unsupportable.

References

Bailin, S., Case, R., Coombs, J. R., & Daniels, L. B. (1999). Common misconceptions of critical thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(3), 269-283. doi:10.1080/002202799183124

Plencner, A. (2014). Critical Thinking and the Challenges of Internet. Communication Today, 5(2), 4-18.

Smith, T. C. (2015). Ebola as a course: Uniting basic sciences, public health and the humanities. Journal of Public Health. doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdv165

What Is an Old Wives' Tale? (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2018, from https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-an-old-wives-tale

Reply to Jordan Paniagua post

There are many elements of critical thinking. To name five of them I will start with what I feel the most important and that is an awareness of ones biases. I feel that this is the most important because if you are not aware of your own biases then you may tend to gravitate more towards one result that the other. I feel the next in line would be having a willingness to change position based on facts presented. An example of this would be I think that the grass only grow good when I put fertilizer on it. But the facts of my research show that sunlight and water provide the same results. Although I have always felt I was correct having the ability to adapt is important. This ties into the next one of the readiness to challenge one’s own position. After those I feel that supporting positions from a factual base rather than opinion comes into play. We tend to see things and think we know the who, what, why, and how. When in reality we are just making an opinion or an educated guess at best on it. Factual evidence can be hard for a person that is not open minded to accept at times. Last, being open to facts that are in support whether for or against the position that you are behind in a topic.

I found the video below I feel is the best example of a person using good critical thinking skills. The video had a little clock on the top right corner showing that I have watched it before. I feel that I watched it for one of my previous courses here at Ashford University. The reason  I decided to go with this video is because the speaker talks on many different aspects of thinking. A great point he made in this video is as he talks about two candidates that go in for a job interview. The employer ask the first person what the height of the first building is. The first guy states he was an architect major and states the building was 155 feet tall. The next person goes out and measures the shadow, measures their shadow,  and finds out the height off doing math and figuring it. Dr. Neil  Degrasse states “when you know how to think, it empowers you far beyond those who know what to think”.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwoohzjscHY

 

A video I found where  the speaker was unable to use good critical thinking skills is an interview with Senator Schumer. I feel he does not use critical thinking in his interview because he is biased towards his political agenda. One of the most important skills of critical thinking is the ability to change your stance based on facts not opinions. This interview talks about the second amendment and the NRA. I feel that this is an issue we have in the political world often. In my time working at the White House I found that politicians often ignored facts  and used their political opinions also known as opinions to base their stances on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poLKKRBKgZg

 

Bailin, S., Case, R., Coombs, J. R., & Daniels, L. B. (1999). Common misconceptions of critical thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(3), 269-283. doi:10.1080/002202799183124