The Critical Thinker
An anthropologist by training, a
teacher by passion and an educator by experience. That is perhaps the best way
to describe myself. Recently, I have
added another epithet to who I am --- a critical thinker. This last one sounds
pretentious, doesn’t it? I will try to explain what I mean by it.
It all started with me starting
to teach a much spoken about skill in today’s world --- critical thinking. I will bring in what critical thinking is in
my posts, but for now let it suffice to say that as I read about, taught, and
practiced a lot of what I was teaching, I realized that my own thinking was
changing. I was seeing issues more
clearly, there was more precision to my thoughts, I was better able to solve
problems and make difficult decisions. I was gradually becoming a critical
thinker --- someone who looks deeply at things, goes beyond the obvious, makes
connections between seemingly unconnected things. This is something I have also helped others
do in my 30 years of teaching and training. Over the years, I have had
students, colleagues, participations in my workshops, people I have interacted
with, tell me that I have changed the way they think. I have helped them think
through ideas, plans, dilemmas. I have been able to help resolve family
conflicts. I have helped them reflect on their own thinking. A very humbling
experience indeed.
This blog is all about my ongoing
journey towards critical thinking. It is
yet another avatar of who I am and what I do. It is about looking at things
differently, about life, about interactions with others, about teaching, and
about connections between ideas. It is about critiquing our own thinking, about
questioning our assumptions, about looking at life with new eyes.
Finally, this blog is really a
conversation. I want to take ideas I have come across, think through them,
perhaps combine them with other ideas, and share these thoughts with others.
Hence, your comments are very important to keep this conversation going. So let’s converse over a blog-post. Please keep your comments coming.
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