DESIGNING A COURSE ON CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS

Information is shoved at us daily from every direction, unceasingly. From the popular media, from the incessant messages that are pumped into our phones every minute, or more seriously, from the information that comes in the form of laws and policies that bind and restrict us. To submit to the barrage of information without critically examining it is a sure way to surrender our freedom. Critical thinking skills have become survival skills in the face of the information onslaught.

Critical thinking skills will help us maintain our freedoms, which is sufficient reason to acquire those skills. But it will do more. It will help us to deal with information more effectively and to innovate and create new ideas from the knowledge we extract from the information. Critical thinking will help us become more effective learners who can build on the large amount of knowledge that is being unleashed by the information.

Critical thinking is important not only in educational or professional contexts but as a living skill. It is an indispensable skill to understand and analyze information and make important decisions in our lives. Never in our history have we encountered information as today. Information technology will multiply the amount exponentially every few days. Much of that information is not abstract or detached from our daily lives. It affects the decisions and the choices we make.

In designing this course, we have taken into consideration the cultural traditions in this country that tend not to support critical thinking and regard a critical approach as being rude or disobedient. Our education system has contributed to this by encouraging rote learning and rewarding the regurgitation of information without critical analysis. Unfortunately, even in higher education, there is very little encouragement to critically analyze what is being taught. Only in a few institutions or programs is critical thinking taught as an independent subject or as part of the syllabus of any subject.

School teachers we have spoken to tend to think that critical thinking is a difficult skill to teach. Many of them believe that students are not ready to absorb such skills and must be content with obtaining knowledge that is found in the textbooks and formalized through syllabuses. Many have also alluded to the fact that critical thinking can only be taught after the learner has had a sufficient command of the knowledge and It is the role of teachers to equip students with the knowledge. What also emerged from our discussions is a reluctance amongst teachers, brought upon by fear of official retribution, to introduce any form of critical approach to education. Control and conformity and rigid adherence to the status quo seem to be the unalterable canons of education. Critical and creative thinking are aspirations stated in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025. A new curriculum has been proposed that will add these elements to the education meted out in schools. To make that happen, there has to be a reorientation of the attitudes of not only the teachers but the whole bureaucracy of education and of those in government, making policies on education. One thing that must cease is the punishment of individuals for artistic and literary expression. We have become a society with increasingly thin skin. Criticism has been criminalized.

Our institutions of higher education are no better. They are highly regulated, and contrary to the official rhetoric, the education provided in universities and colleges is not student-centered. Rigid adherence to outdated prescribed syllabuses does not cater to student needs. Dissemination of book-based knowledge is the main objective of higher education. As in primary and secondary education, tertiary teachers also believe that students are not ready to engage in any critical examination until they are sufficiently apprised of the knowledge that is imparted at the different levels of higher education. The containment of education in the classrooms is reinforced by laws that restrict the academic freedom of the professoriate. We cite only one set of such laws – the laws regulating university staff discipline that prohibit any form of criticism of the government or its policies and the university and its policies.

This course is driven by the belief that a disposition to critical thinking will benefit both the individual so disposed and the nation ultimately. A disposition to examine everything critically will increase creativity and productivity, whether individually, in groups, or in the workplace.

 Course Outline

1.       What is meant by critical thinking?

2.       Why teach/learn critical thinking?

3.       Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Skills.

4.       The origins of critical thinking – in philosophy, in psychology, in education.

5.       Example of how knowledge developed through critical thinking.

6.       Dispositions, attributes, and behaviour that support critical thinking.

7.       Critical thinking tools

8.       Knowledge

9.       How emotions affect thinking

10.   Imagination as the mental projection of possibilities which transcend time and space and offer what could be rather than what is.

Higher Education – Access and Equity

Building capacity alone will not address equity and access issues that confront a significant part of our population.

Institutions and regulatory agents must be more proactive in their roles to bring people with limited access and reach to higher education into educational institutions. Malaysian regulatory services, and indeed the public are still steeped in outdated, elitist notions of entitlement and eligibility to higher education. These notions are inherent in our social structures that are intensely hierarchical, almost like caste systems. Even now, in this so-called enlightened age, people are heard to say that not everyone needs to be educated, or in debates on language, that not everyone needs to learn English. These notions are also partly inherited from our colonial past. The British education system was until recent times very elitist. But even the colonialists have changed. The Dearing Report of the United Kingdom, published only 20 years ago in 1997, recognized that universities cannot hide any longer behind axioms like ‘education for its own sake’ and must take action to make higher education serve the interests of the individual and the nation.

Higher education policies in Malaysia do not give sufficient attention to this issue. Quality and standards and the reputation of universities are their main arguments to keep learners out. This must not continue. Regulators must look at new strategies to include a broader range of learners into post-secondary and higher education. And, if their skills are not adequate for higher education, to introduce measures that will bring those skills to par. Keeping people out is not a strategy to widen access nor to improve quality in education. The real measure of success of higher education institutions must be based on how they created strategies to improve access. Poverty, differentials in earning and the casting of status based on education, all social ills will be removed by broadening access. How to do this? The following policy changes will help;

Preparatory programs to bridge learners into higher education. The bridging course that played an important role in preparing those without formal entry qualification into higher education was outlawed by the Ministry of Education policies. Yet, such courses have been recognized the world over as a means to mitigate access issues;

To add to secondary education syllabus, a non-examinable preparatory course to tune students to think about education beyond the school;

Language, soft skills and Learning to Learn Courses to be run parallelly with substantive programs in colleges and universities;

Reexamination of the duration and content of part-time programs in all fields to encourage adult working employees into part-time higher education;

Permit secondary schools to conduct preparatory courses from private higher educational institutions or part of such courses in the school to mitigate the cost of travel, accommodation, etc.

Rethinking strategies for distance education that will allow universities and colleges to conduct part of their programs in the distance education mode, including in secondary schools with support of schoolteachers.

The irony is that this country is no stranger to improving access to education. It has already implemented successful strategies to improve access and equity in higher education. The special secondary schools, the Matriculation programs, the MARA colleges, and UiTM are all the products of a successful strategy to mitigate access issues. These steps are, however, not inclusive and for that reason remain ostracized from our perceptions of fairness and equity. 

None of these institutions or their underlying policies have to be sacrificed to introduce strategies of inclusiveness within the general educational institutions in the country. Both public and private sector institutions can be conscripted through encouragements and incentives to make space and create pathways to those left out of higher education. Recent strategies by public universities to recruit high fee students into normal programs and through part-time courses show that they have the capacity. What is sadly absent is a commitment from them to their most profound obligation – to improve access to those who are excluded. This must change.