Class Response: My Initial Thoughts on Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a phrase I've personally had drilled into my head from too many people to even list.  I think all of us have heard it used from a very young age to describe the procedure we use to figure out a problem.  However, the spectrum the problem falls on is infinite.  I can remember my fourth grade teacher, a woman I despised, repeatedly telling the class to "use critical thinking" to address and solve a problem for a variety of subjects.  Throughout the remainder of grade school it seemed like it was always something we were using to figure out a problem.  I don't think any teacher ever really delved into the meaning of "thinking critically." It was always something we were told to do, and to me that meant straying off the beaten path and thinking outside of the box.  I believe thinking critically means to drop any preconceptions and address the problem from the outside looking in as opposed to head on.  I do believe that I think critically.  As a matter of fact I think its one of my strongest intellectual attributes.  I've always been one to think outside of the box: I like to look at problems and solve them from varying perspectives. Something thats gotten me in trouble with way too many teachers and a handful of girls.  I always hated textbooks, and personally, I achieved my best learning when I wasn't pouring over pages of text or writing down a lecture verbatim.  That being said, thinking critically is different for everyone.  Thats what makes humans the most intelligent beings on the planet.  Our ability to play back scenarios, or experiences in our mind and find the best route to a problems solution is what set us apart from all the other species of primitive human.  While instinct and fight or flight drives the core of our decision making, man and woman's ability to quickly come up with a plan of action based off of previous occurrence or logic regarding the outcome of the task at hand is what I think drives the understanding of critical thinking.