ELEMENTS AND STANDARDS OF CRITICAL THINKING

Elements and standards of critical thinking

Table of content

Elements and standards of critical thinking1

Personal View Of The Critical Thinking Process1

Importance of Critical Thinking1

Steps in Critical Thinking4

To Implement Best Alternative6

Conclusion7

References8

Elements and standards of critical thinking

Personal View Of The Critical Thinking Process

We can define Critical thinking as the approach that guides individuals to think for themselves and establish their own independent opinion on the basis of observations made during the course of thinking process and that is based on sound reasoning, without being influenced by the outside opinion. The approach converts the people having merely puppet-like attitude into independent, self reliant thinker and researcher.

The approach of thinking critically is very vital for the survival and eventual excellence of an individual in his daily life. It can even affect the growth process of individuals in their academic as well as professional career. The approach guides individuals to decide what to be believed and how to act in accordance of the once own judgment. The critical thinking approach helps individuals to analyze a particular situation from various applicable angles and to reach at a most viable solution after the careful thought process.

Importance of Critical Thinking

As we all know that all of our judgments that eventually guide our decisions and final actions stem through certain assumptions. If such assumptions are analyzed carefully, people are prone to take wrong decision and may take a totally incorrect course of actions in specific circumstances. In our personal lives, it is the critical thinking that makes doors of communications open instead of moving on a set patterns of presumptions made on somebody else's actions in past (Pope 2006). Then in our professional career, unless we think critically, we will continue to follow old paradigms of thinking that might have been irrelevant with the passage of time.

If the critical thinking approach is practiced, people tend to be uninfluenced by the stereotypes established for certain individuals and establish their own opinion for them. Likewise, people start to perceive the world how the person on the other end of the table sees and thus make people ready to empathize the point of views of others. Critical thinking ensures to create ability in individuals to interpret the same situation in various angles and thus decide the best line of action.

To understand the absence of critical thinking, let's quote an example that I have heard recently. Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder; all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable. Sooner enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.

One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put ...