Thinking About Thinking
Thinking About Thinking
M. Bakri Musa
Excerpt #11 from my Qur’an, Hadith, And Hikayat: Exercises In Critical Thinking
“All cultures, whether Arab, Asian, or Western require a critical and self-critical mind.” Tariq Ramadan (What I Believe)
When Malaysian students first took part in the Program For International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009, their scores were abysmal. Their performances in subsequent tests were no better. Malaysian students are two to three years behind their peers in developed countries. The only comfort, if that is the right word, is that Malaysians are still ahead of the Malawis and Indonesians.
This decline was evident as early as the late 1970s when I visited local schools and examined their textbooks and workbooks.
Those abysmal scores prompted policymakers to do major rethinking. Unlike PISA, Malaysian national school tests rely on recall and regurgitation, with minimal thinking skills needed or exerted. Nor are those attributes encouraged.
The government claims that higher order thinking skills (HOTS) are now emphasized with the national curriculum revamped. The impact however, had been minimal. Perhaps the low 2022 PISA scores could be excused because of Covid-19, but the general decline continues.
Today everyone is concerned with HOTS, that is, to go beyond mere regurgitating of what had been forced-fed into the students. Concerns about students’ ability to think now grab national headlines as well as the public consciousness and educators’ attention.
Brochures of universities are laden with promises to teach students critical thinking, with schools and educators undergoing accelerated or culup courses on HOTS. Company recruiters and human resource personnel too are looking for candidates with critical thinking skills so they could solve novel problems facing our ever-changing society.
“Thinking outside the box,” an expression of higher order thinking, is now the new slogan and favorite exhortations of superiors to their subordinates, and teachers their students. However, the best way to achieve that would be to demonstrate and reward those desirable traits rather than through endless exhortations.
Before one can think outside the box, one must be familiar with what’s inside. Not only the contents but also the box’s natural rhythm and internal frequencies, to borrow metaphors from physics.
The importance of HOTS goes beyond the classrooms, lecture halls, or recruiters’ interviews. HOTS impact our everyday lives. I remember as a youngster clearing the stream leading to our rice field in preparation for planting. I came upon a large fallen tree that had obstructed the flow.
I was about to saw off the trunk and drag it away, a formidable undertaking, when my father stopped me. Cut and drag the log in your head first, he told me, and then see whether that would be the solution. If it would not, then you would have saved yourself much wasted work.
As it turned out, I did not have to saw the huge log off but merely dig a channel underneath it, a much simpler and not such a back-breaking chore. Had I cut and dragged the tree, it could then have blocked the path below or worse, have a nasty spring-back action when cutting it, thus injuring me.
Thinking the problem in my head first not only spared me much wasted work and possible injury, not to mention creating another problem as with obstructing the path below, but that mental exercise of downstream analysis led me to a far superior and safer solution.
That in essence is critical thinking, and its value. Think of the problem clearly and rationally first so as to understand it better and gauge the boundaries as well as assess the applicability of one’s solution. That involves questioning one’s earlier assumptions implicit in framing the problem. Then after considering all these factors one could then reach the most effective and workable solution as well as help save time and effort. Help but not guarantee. Nonetheless after having done the critical thinking ahead, one could better justify one’s action even if that would later be proven erroneous or unworkable.
What applies to a problem is also applicable to an assumption, assertion, or belief. Critical thinking helps one accept, reject, or be circumspect and withhold one’s judgement until one could get a better assessment.
Einstein once remarked that if given an hour to solve a problem, he would spend the first fifty-five minutes thinking about it. The only difference between Einstein’s wisdom and my father’s observation is that the former, being a physicist, put it in quantitative terms. My father illustrated it qualitatively or metaphorically. First, imagine lifting the log, never mind how long that would take, before attempting to do it physically. That may not even be necessary after you have solved the problem in your head.
The carpenter’s aphorism–measure twice (or more), cut once–comes to mind.
When it comes to an idea or assertion, think or analyze it first. Consider its other meanings and various implications. Do a downstream analysis of the consequences of your accepting the idea or an action before executing it. Then even if you could not ascertain the truth of the assertion, you would be in a better position to at least evaluate its consequences.
Next: Lessons From A Sophomore Philosophy Class