Critical Thinking During My School Days

 Critical Thinking During My School Days

M. Bakri Musa

 

Excerpt #7 from my Qur’an, Hadith, And Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking

 

The importance of critical thinking was imparted upon me early during my primary school years, only to be snuffed out during secondary school. I was fortunate later to have benefited from a modern liberal education in Canada. That resurrected my earlier natural childhood critical thinking aptitude which we all have. We have to in order to survive. My critical skills were later strengthened during medical school and specialty training years.

 

         My teachers engaged my thinking skills early during primary school. As such those years were fun, more so during test times, as perverse as that may seem. Tests are universally deemed stressful. Hence many schools have done away with them in the belief that would enhance learning. That is only an assumption. Neuropsychologists tell us that the effect of stress on learning follows a Bell curve; a little bit of it enhances learning while too much, inhibiting it. The challenge is to find the optimal level.

 

         I had my share of tests during primary school. In part because of the frequency, I did not feel the stress, the wisdom of the Malay aphorism biasa menghilangkan bisa (familiarity detoxifies the poison) being operative. There was something more, I now realize.

 

         In a typical test we would be given a series of patterns and then asked multiple-choice questions. Only much later when I took a class in psychology at university would I recognize those as Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Tests, the non-language-dependent variety.

 

         My first headmaster, G E D Lewis, had just returned after the war with his London University PhD where he had developed those IQ tests. As such he was eager to “field test” his new tool on other than British kids, and we were his ready subjects. He was followed by F J D Rawcliffe, also a London University PhD, and his interest on cross-cultural applicability of IQ Tests.

 

         As an aside, ponder this. While in a small primary school deep in the ulu of the country (Kuala Pilah, Negri Sembilan) our headmasters had doctorates from a leading British University! That was not all. My English teacher in Grade V as well as later my headmaster in secondary school were Oxonians!

 

         Back to my primary school years, as we had to take those special tests at frequent intervals, we were dispensed from having to take the regular subject-based school examinations. A testimony to the wide autonomy local headmasters had then! Soon I developed a “stress-free” attitude towards tests. I also acquired the added notion that I did not have to study or memorize my class work for those tests.

 

         That misconception proved disastrous during my early secondary school years. During my first term in Form One of secondary school (Year 7), I had splashes of red marks all over my class tests and assignments, except for science and mathematics. Those were my salve, but not enough for my parents.

 

         One day my teacher asked me to distribute the marked papers of an earlier test in history. I saw a paper with an A plus, and the owner happened to sit in the far corner of the classroom. On my long, slow walk towards him, I managed to glance and partially read his answers.

 

         To my surprise they were but regurgitations from our textbook. Here I thought that when asked why the Roman Empire collapsed, I had to give my own novel reasons based on what I had read. My teacher was not impressed.

 

         From that day on I decided to summarize and memorize my history and geography texts. From then on, I aced my tests. I should have been elated as I had discovered the secret. Far from that! I felt that I was forced to conform to my teachers’ rigid and meaningless expectations.

 

         A few years later as a consequence of my now improved test scores, I was shunted into the science stream and thus spared from taking history and geography. With that, less memorization and regurgitation at test times.

 

         Less but not entirely eliminated. The focus then shifted to “spotting” questions, guessing which ones would likely be asked by reviewing previous years’ tests. My working hypothesis being that questions asked in the immediate past few years would unlikely to be repeated the following year. At least my skills and focus now shifted from pure memorization to some sort of intelligent forecasting!

 

Next Excerpt # 8:  Dramatic Shift At University