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

Religious Texts As Exercises In Critical Thinking

 Religious Texts As Exercises In Critical Thinking

M. Bakri Musa

 

Excerpt #10 from my Qur’an, Hadith, And Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking

 

The literature on critical thinking is written mostly by Westerners, using examples familiar to their societies. As such it would be difficult for Malaysians, Malays in particular, to relate. If you cannot relate to a problem or material, it becomes less meaningful and those exercises become less relevant or appropriate for learning. This was the early challenges faced by the American Philosophy Professor Edward Muad Omar teaching at the University of Qatar. By using examples and materials Malays and Muslims could relate to, I hope to reduce those difficulties and increase their relevance.

 

         I am not trying to give commentaries or translations. There are already volumes devoted to that. Rather I am using those texts as exercises in critical thinking, and only that. Those ancient scholars have done their part with their encyclopedic contributions, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. However, they were addressing the ummah of their time. Their challenges were very different from ours. So should be the solutions.

 

         We must be prepared to accept the fact that the burden they carried was salt while ours, cotton, as per the earlier fable of the two donkeys. If we were to blindly follow the edicts of the ancients, we may in fact not be lightening our load but the very opposite. Hence the need to exercise critical thinking on reading those ancient texts; likewise when we unthinkingly apply those ancient edicts to contemporary problems and challenges.

 

         Engaging our critical faculties would help us better appreciate the message of the Qur’an and the wisdom of our Prophet. That could only enrich our lives. Those texts would then become more meaningful instead of being mindless incantations in ancient Arabic. On a personal level, using those examples as well as our lores, novels, and hikayat is also my way of getting reacquainted with my faith, culture, and literature.

 

         Like any skill, critical thinking can be learned and strengthened. Once acquired it becomes habitual or automatic. As such it would be useful and appropriate to first review as well as understand the learning process.

 

         There are many obstacles to critical thinking, some obvious and others less so. A major and indispensable component of critical thinking involves asking questions and evaluating the responses. Unlike in debates where the concerns are with such superficialities as displaying one’s oratorical prowess and scoring points, critical thinking is concerned with enlightening the issues and elevating one’s understanding of them. It is not a contest.

 

         The obstacles to critical thinking specific to Malays include our religious beliefs and practices; our socio-cultural elements, in particular our deeply entrenched feudalism; and our narrow, destructive language nationalism.

 

         Malay leaders may take umbrage to my assertion that religious beliefs are significant barriers to critical thinking. Islam, at least during its Golden Age, robust discussions were very much the norm; hence the encyclopedic productions of those early scholars. They were critical thinkers. Today’s Muslims would do well to emulate them. Nor were those ancients afraid of learning from the atheistic Greeks. Knowledge is knowledge; they all originate from Allah.

 

         In exercising our critical faculties, we would not be imitating the secular scientific West, as many contemporary Muslim leaders imply, rather the best of our illustrious intellectual ancestors.

 

         Peruse Imam Ghazzali’s severe criticism of Ibn Sini and Ibn Rashid in The Incoherence of the Philosophers, and the equally pungent rebuttals in Ibn Rashid’s The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Those intellectual battles would make the current discussions among Third World Muslim intellectuals more like junior high school debates.

 

         It is this glaring deficit of critical thinking and rational analysis (and with that the consequent vigorous differences in views and opinions) in contemporary Muslim discourses that have yet to be appreciated much less remedied. As per Shabbir Akhtar in his The Quran and the Secular Mind:  A Philosophy of Islam, “An important intellectual deficit in the Modern House of Islam is the lack of a living philosophical culture that could influence its narrowly religious outlook.”

 

         We have created this unnecessary but formidable psychological barrier to critical thinking by dismissing it as “un-Islamic” or alien, specifically Western practice. This is the conceit behind the “Islamization of Knowledge” fad. It is part of the current general antipathy towards the use of reason (akal).

 

         It is the supreme irony that while the Qur’an emancipated the ancient Bedouins, making them give up their many odious personal and cultural practices, today it has been degraded into an instrument to repress its believers. The American Muslim leader Ingrid Mattson referred to that as “spiritual abuse.” How apt!

 

         The scientific method or way of thinking is not Western rather that those who conceptualized and practiced it first were from the West; likewise with capitalism and free enterprise. The West introduced both but does not own them. Had the Islamic civilization of yore not crumbled, then critical thinking would have been an Islamic concept as those ancient Muslims practiced and were adept at it. As for capitalism, Benedict Koehler asserted in his book, Early Islam And The Birth of Capitalism, ancient Muslims practiced a primordial form of capitalism.

 

         Remnants of our feudal culture are among the many impediments to critical thinking. In feudal culture you do not question your fate; that is fixed and determined at birth. At the top of the feudal heap are the sultans whose positions are sanctioned by the Malay version of Islam that considers sultans as Allah’s representatives on earth. As you do not and cannot question God, you cannot likewise challenge His representative on earth. Unasked is why does God need any representative.

 

         Malay language per se is not an obstacle to critical thinking except that language nationalists have subverted the school system such that this skill is not valued or taught.

 

Next:  Excerpt #11:  Thinking About Thinking

Pertukaran Suasana Belajar Yang Penting Di Universiti

 Pertukaran Suasana Belajar Yang Penting Di Universiti

M. Bakri Musa

 

Petikan # 8 dari buku saya Al-Quran, Hadis, Dan Hikayat: Latihan Dalam Pemikiran Kritis akan di sambung minggu depan.

 

Pertengahan tahun pertama di Universiti Alberta, Edmonton, Kanada, saya terkejut apabila diberi ujian "untuk di buat di rumah" manakala di kursus yang lain pula peperiksaan "buku terbuka." Bayangkan, melakukan ujian di rumah dengan nota serta buku teks yang sedia ada! Begitu juga dengan peperiksaan buku terbuka. Tidak pernah terdengar di tanah airku. Sekali pandang itu adalah galakan untuk pelajar menipu dan meniru!

 

            Jelas profesor di Kanada tidak hairan dengan kepintasan atau berapa cepat si pelajar boleh memuntahkan apa yang telah diajar atau diluapkan dalam kuliah atau apa yang telah terbaca dalam buku. Mereka ingin mengetahui bolehkah pelajar berfikir dengan sendiri.

 

            Kejutan ke dua pada saya ialah ini. Selepas ujian pertama dalam kelas kimia, profesor kami ingin memulakan satu program makmal istimewa untuk pelajar yang mendapat keputusan terbaik. Saya bertuah kerana dipilih. Saya bukan bermegah sebab selepas melalui Tingkatan Enam di Malaysia (13 tahun persekolahan), tahun pertama di universiti, sekurang-kurangnya dalam bidang sains, adalah mudah sahaja. Alberta hanya mempunyai dua belas tahun persekolahan.

 

            Kami dipasangkan dan diberi masalah eksperimen yang berasingan. Untuk saya ialah mengukur sebatian yang diberikan. Kami diberi semua kemudahan dan peralatan yang sedia ada. Pasangan saya ialah pelajar dari sekolah menengah luar bandar di Alberta.

 

            Kami bermula dengan memeriksa alat penimbang dan bagaimana untuk menimbang satu bahan yang hanya berat seberapa geram sahaja. Dacing biasa terhad gunanya. Kemudian kami pergi ke dacing analitik yang lebih sensitif. Itu juga ada hadnya. Kami masih tidak dapat mengukur berat benda yang terlalu ringan. Penat memikirkan bagaimana untuk menyelesaikannya.

 

            Selepas setengah jam, profesor kami, seperti yang sudah dia janjikannya, meminta kami membincangkan masalah kami di hadapan seluruh kelas. Sejurus sebelum perbincangan itu, salah seorang pelajar lain mencadangkan kepada saya jangan menggunakan alat menimbang tetapi melarutkan benda ke dalam air dan mengukur ketumpatan warna dengan menggunakan alat spektrometer.

 

            Sesaat sahaja dia berkata "larutkan . . ." otakku mula mencurahkan penyelesaian. Dia tidak perlu lagi melanjutkan fikirannya. Apabila profesor kami datang, kami menerangkan langkah yang kami akan ambil. Yakni melarutkan sebatian dalam isi padu air yang diketahui, kemudian mencairkan sampel secara bersiri, dan memplot bacaan ketumpatan warna dengan pencairan. Dengan itu kita boleh mengukur kepada penurunan lebih seribu kali ganda jumlah melalui pencairan bersiri tersebut. Nasib baiklah bahawa bahan yang kami diberi adalah sebatian kuprum yang berwarna biru bila dilarutkan. Kebiruan itu boleh di ukur dengan alat spektrometer dan juga ternyata di pandang.

 

            Walaupun saya berasa seronok serta bangga sebab dapat mencari penyelesaian kepada masalah yang diberikan, namun saya masih terseksa dengan pemikiran bahawa saya telah gagal untuk memikirkannya sehingga rakan sekelas saya mencadangkannya. Perasaan kecewa saya ditenangkan sedikit apabila saya mendapat tahu bahawa rakan saya yang bijak itu telah menuntut di sekolah menengah bestari. Mereka sudah biasa diajar untuk berfikir dan menyelesaikan masalah, bukan hanya dengan menghafalkan buku atau apa yang diajar oleh guru seperti apa yang sering berlaku di sekolah biasa, termasuklah di Malaysia.

 

            Peristiwa itu menjadi penunjuk bagi saya. Yakni saya juga boleh mempelajari kemahiran untuk berfikir dengan teliti dan luar berkas. Pemikiran kritis, seperti kemahiran lain, boleh diajar dan diperkukuhkan sepanjang hidup dengan menggunakan dan mengamalkannya.

 

            Peristiwa itu juga memberi saya dua hikmat. Pertama, berhati atas gangguan yang mungkin mencabar anda apabila hendak menyelesaikan sesuatu masalah. Saya terpikat dengan istilah tugasan. Ia berkata untuk mengukur, dan oleh kerana saya diberi sampel yang di beri beratnya, saya terus berfikir tentang gaya menimbang dengan mesin timbang. Saya tidak dapat keluar dari kurungan atau landasan itu. Mungkin saya akan mempunyai fikiran yang terbuka dan tidak dilandasi sekiranya istilah "kirakan" dan bukan timbang digunakan.

 

            Ke dua, kejadian di bilik makmal itu menyadarkan saya tentang nilai dan apa sebenarnya makna markah ujian. Betul anda perlu mempunyai keputusan yang cemerlang untuk mendapati biasiswa atau hadiah akademik yang diidamkan, tetapi itu tidak langsung bermakna jika anda tidak dapat menyelesaikan masalah. Mendapat markah tinggi hanya bermakna anda hanya pandai menjangka dengan betul apa yang si pemeriksa inginkan daripada anda. Ini tidak lain daripada tabiat saya semasa sekolah menengah untuk mengagak atau meramalkan soalan yang mungkin timbul dalam peperiksaan hujung tahun.

 

            Pelajar yang mencadangkan penyelesaian itu kepada juga mempunyai markah tinggi walau pun rendah daripada saya. Sebagai penunjuk kemudian, beliau terus menjadi Profesor Kimia ternama.

            

            Berbalik kepada nilai peperiksaan dan markah ujian khasnya dalam kehidupan sehari, tamadun Cina kuno tahan berabad sebagai mercu sistem pentadbiran yang cekap dan beres. Sebabnya ialah Maharaja Cina memilih calon terbaik daripada peperiksaan perkhidmatan awamnya yang terkenal. Betul pentadbiran Cina cemerlang selama beberapa abad, tetapi tidak selamanya. Negara Cina kemudiannya dengan mudah dikalahkan oleh tentera Penjajah Barat. 

 

            Sebabnya? Sebahagiannya ialah pegawai pentadbir Cina dipilih hanya melalui ujian tersebut. Ini bermakna bukan calon yang terbaik atau paling bijak tetapi hanya mereka yang dianggap atau difikirkan oleh si pemeriksa sebagai terbaik dan paling cemerlang. Itulah istilah “merit” dan meritokrasi yang biasa di fahamkan. Maknanya, yang paling bijak meneka soalan peperiksaan atau boleh memberikan jawapan yang dikehendaki oleh si pemeriksa.

 

            Seabad kemudian, Amerika akan mengulangi kesilapan Negara Cina itu. Menteri Pertahanannya, Robert McNamara, seorang lepasan University of California, Berkeley dan juara lulusan Harvard Business School, mengambil hanya mereka yang berkelulusan "terbaik dan paling pintar" ("Best and brightest” atau “Whiz Kids") untuk membantu dia melaksanakan Perang Vietnam pada 1960-an dan 70-an. McNamara juga menggunakan istilah "bilangan badan" (body count) sebagai ukuran kemajuan perang. Malangnya, seperti yang telah dibuktikan oleh peristiwa kemudiannya, pelajar terbaik dari Harvard tidak dapat menandingi pemimpin militer Viet Cong yang telah diterajui oleh hutan belukar dan berbaju tidur.

 

            Bagi kebijaksanaan menggunakan ukuran "bilangan badan" sebagai petunduk kemajuan peperangan, itu sama juga dengan meramalkan kedahsyatan banjir hanya dengan kehitaman awan. Dinamik peperangan, seperti juga cuaca, boleh dan mungkin berubah dengan cepat dan mendadak.

 

Seterusnya: Petikan #10: Kitab Agama Untuk Latihan Berfikir Dengan Teliti

Dramatic Intellectual Shift At University

  

Dramatic Intellectual Shift At University

M. Bakri Musa

 

Excerpt # 8 from my Qur’an, Hadith, And Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking

 

Midway through the first semester of my freshman year at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, I was stunned when given a “take home” test, while for another course, an “open book” one. Imagine, doing a test at home with your notes as well as textbooks readily available! Unheard of back in my native land; an encouragement to cheat and copy!

 

         It was obvious that those Canadian professors were not interested in how well or fast we could regurgitate what they had taught us or what we had read in the textbooks. They wanted us to think.

 

         That was not my only surprise. After the first test in Chemistry, our professor decided to start a special experimental laboratory program for the few top students. I was fortunate to be selected. I am not bragging here. After going through Sixth Form in Malaysia (13 years of schooling), the first year of university, at least in the sciences, was a breeze for me. The Albertans had only twelve.

 

         We were paired and each group was assigned a separate experimental problem. Mine was to measure minute quantities of a given compound. A sample was given to us. We had all the departmental facilities and equipment at our disposal. My partner was a student from a rural high school in Alberta.

 

         The first thing we did was go over the balance scales and to see how we could adjust it to measure tiny weights. That had its limits. Then we were on to the sensitive analytical balance. That too could get us only so far. We still could not accurately measure minute amounts. We wracked our brains but could go no further.

 

         After about 30 minutes or so our professor, as he had promised, stopped all of us and asked us to discuss our problems with the rest of the class. Just before that discussion, one of the other students suggested to me that instead of using the weighing scale, I should dissolve the compound and measure the color density with the spectrometer.

 

         The moment he said “dissolve the . . . ,” a light bulb switched on in my head. He did not have to go further. So when our professor came by, we told him that we would dissolve the compound in a known volume of water, then serially dilute the sample, and plot the color density readings with the dilutions. We could thus measure to more than a thousand-fold decrease in amounts through such serial dilutions. It helped that our material was a copper compound so we could see the visible blue of the solution lightened with subsequent dilutions. The spectrometer quantified our visual assessment.

 

         Pleased as I was in finding the solution to our problem, nonetheless I was still tormented by the thought that I had failed to even think of it until my fellow classmate had suggested it. Later I learned that he was a graduate of an elite magnet experimental high school in the city where they were taught to think and solve problems, instead of the usual memorization regime at schools elsewhere, Malaysia included.

 

         That was a salve of sorts for me. The corollary to my insight was that I too could learn that skill. Critical thinking, like other skills, can be taught and strengthened throughout our life by using and exercising them.

 

         That episode early in my undergraduate years taught me two lessons. First, be aware of distractions when trying to solve problems. Mine was with the wording of the assignment. It said to measure, and because I was given a sample with a known weight, I immediately thought of weighing and the balance machine. I could not get off that track. Perhaps I would have had an open mind and not been sidetracked had the word “quantify” been used instead of measure.

 

         Second, that incident disabused me of the value and meaning of test scores. Yes, you have to have sterling scores to get that coveted scholarship or academic prize, but that means nothing if you cannot solve problems. Getting good test scores simply means you have correctly anticipated what the examiners wanted out of you. It is but a variation of my earlier successful high school exercises in spotting likely questions for an upcoming examination.

 

         That student who had suggested the right solution had test scores lower than mine at our first test, though still up there. As an update, he had a long and distinguished tenure as Professor of Chemistry at our alma mater.

 

         As for the value of examinations and test scores in real life, the ancient Chinese civilization lasted for centuries as the beacon of an efficient administrative system in part because the Imperial Palace would select only the top candidates from its famed civil service examinations. For centuries, but not forever. The Chinese were later easily outclassed by Western forces. The reason? In part the candidates selected through those tests were not the best or smartest candidates but only those whom the establishment thought were the best and brightest. Or the smartest who could “spot” the questions or could give the answers that the examiners had wanted.

 

         A century later, America would repeat that same mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Berkeley alumnus and star Harvard Business School graduate, recruited only the “best and brightest” (his “Whizz Kids”) to help direct the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 70s. McNamara also instituted his infamous “body count” as a measure of the progress of the war. Unfortunately, as events later proved, Harvard’s best was no match for those pajama-clad jungled-tested Viet Cong generals.

 

         As for the wisdom of “body count” as a measure of progress of a war, that would be akin to predicting the ending of a football game by counting the number of first downs or yards gained early in the first quarter. The dynamics of a war, like a football game, can change quickly and dramatically.

 

Next:  Excerpt #10:  Religious Texts As Exercises In Critical Thinking