(Part l)

In today’s information-intensive world, a valuable personal skill to master is the ability to think critically. This is a necessity whether one is a chief executive officer (CEO) of a major corporation, a platoon leader in the military, or a teacher in an early childhood teaching environment. This is known in the 4S Accelerated English Program as Critical, Constructive and Productive Thinking (CCPT).

One part of the training offered by 4S-AEP is designed to achieve that objective for teachers, tutors and trainers. The goal is to impart the necessary abilities for an individual to be competent and confident at critically and constructively examining ideas, issues, processes, procedures, systems, objects and events in terms of their distinguishable elements, their unique constituencies and their general or common components. The purpose is for the person to be able to make informed, critical judgments about the trustworthiness, validity, relevance and value of the detail exchanged and discerned.

A secondary objective of the Critical Thinking component of CCPT is to provide course participants with critical analytical, evaluation and assessment skills.

These are skills that are essential to problem-solving and situational assessment that can be readily applied in other related cases through the process of skills transfer by which previously known, proven and acceptable solutions and approaches to similar problems in the past can be applied, in part or totally, to a present circumstance.

CREATIVE – PRODUCTIVE THINKING

Coupled with the art of critical thinking is the ability to think creatively. It is about creating, developing or generating new or original ideas. It allows for the thinker to critically and constructively consider a matter from “outside the box”, i.e. from different, even unusual aspects, adopting an innovative, often untried approach to problem solving, resulting in a novel, yet apt outcome.

Productive thinking is also outcome-centered. It is about thinking smarter, better and often differently, eventually producing a result or outcome that will be the most beneficial and suitable as the solution to a problem, to meet a need, or to achieve an acceptable compromise in a competitive situation.

In today’s world where competition dominates globally, nationally and locally in every aspect of life be it commerce, industry, politics, education, sport and other human-related activities, how one thinks is crucial. Information is available to individuals as never before in the history of mankind and with this information comes the requirement to make judgments that can positively or negatively impact heavily on one’s family, friends, finances and future.

Despite what is sometimes advanced, critical, creative, productive thinkers are not born. They are bred. These skills can be learned. When acquired, developed, practiced and mastered, they can become the key to making a significant and positive difference in a workplace, in a classroom, in a home or in an individual’s world.

CCPT is a personal skill that maximizes one’s ability to delve into newly-revealed and previously known information and evidence as well as into submerged detail and sometimes obscure but related factors.

It is then about interpreting the reliance, reliability, relationship and relevance of the information pieces that have been gleaned and gathered, to a particular issue in a disciplined way, thus gaining an in-depth understanding of some problematic aspects that ultimately results in its resolution, or in turn, the recognition and acceptance of its insoluble nature.

Critical thinking skills enable an individual to reduce and refine complex and compounded problems and associated issues to their key, core, influential factors allowing a raw, unembellished, unbiased, accurate evaluation to be made.

Coupled with the enhancement of critical thinking is the gradual willingness on the part of the thinker to be totally introspective, challenging and evaluating one’s traditional, personal thought processes and fact-finding procedures. This includes one questioning innate biases and also isolating preconceived ideas and prejudices to ensure that objectivity overrides and conquers subjectivity.

The outcome is the talent to make critically assessed, productive and often creative judgments about a myriad of issues and circumstances based on disciplined, constructive, systematic, diagnostic evaluation of the pertinent facts and influential factors – not on assumptions or on strongly held personal beliefs.

Next week, we shall delve further into how to develop personal critical, creative and productive thinking skills.

(The author Keith W. Wright is a former politician, an educator and the director of the Australian International Language Academy. E-mail questions to youth@mb.com.ph).