Critical Thinking

An amazing tool for the survival of our species.  We can debate that without it, we would have been extinct.  For certain, it opened horizons for us to develop and to reshape our lives in its current form.   We are living  the age of thinkers and those who don't think cannot compete anymore.  It is the age where only the thinker can excel.  Come up with something new and you win.   Please give up the idea that memory is the greatest treasure.  It is a treasure only when it acts as a supporter to our critical thinking.  We are culturally programmed to use memory as the trash can of the difficult analysis.  Guess what, it is backfiring nowadays.  We are incapable of  producing originality cause it is way ahead of us. We need to run the rusted engines again.  We are not anymore impressed with those who memorize the capitals of the countries cause we can google them.   We got to think and think and yes it is hard.  Thinking is not exclusive to the educated, it should be the main tool in every profession  in order to develop that profession.

Our educational system is a memory based system with huge comprehension gaps.  Just listen to people saying that Lebanese education is so so strong, our kids excel abroad.  Maybe many of our kids excel abroad but thanks to their system and not ours.   

We have to start encouraging our kids to think alone.  Their dependency on us should be a decreasing sequence and not a monotonic behavior.  Encourage their sense of choice.  Try to avoid the "do this and do that" but get your way by giving them choices with consequences.  We got to teach our kids to memorize only what they understand cause then their solid base starts to build up.  Push our schools to rely less on memory and more on analysis.  We want future thinkers who think twice before they speak, who use emotions where it belongs and who can filter useless irrational conversations in addition to many other things that will for sure be obvious then.