About this blog

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.