Analysing Critical Thinking
This seminar flows from an article titled 'Critical Thinking- A Post Truth Remedy', published in The Hindu on January 30, written by Dr. Albert Rayan. I am going to introduce this theme by bringing to fore the concept and importance of critical thinking. Post-truth denotes the circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion, than appeals to emotions and personal belief. The US based Partnership for 21st century skills has identified communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking as the skills required for 21st century education and the author holds critical thinking as the most relevant and important, and I shall attempt to explain why. To define critical thinking is to say that it is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. In social science, this is referred to as 'agency', which is the capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own free choices, and there s...