Critical Reflections

Thanks to Janet Staub for sharing additional resources and reflections on Chapter 5: Critical Thinking!

The alarm woke me at 6:00 AM. I made a breakfast of eggs, mustard greens, scallions and coffee with soy milk. (Choices based on my latest review of nutritional approaches. Was that Paleo or South Beach?) I ate it while reviewing and answering my email. I rejected a temptation to buy a cheap flight to Las Vegas, but I did get hooked at looking at other air fare options for a later trip to visit my daughter in San Francisco! I resisted an urge to buy an ice ax and snow shovel at an incredible price since the last time I went snow camping was in 1974. I chose words delicately, as I wrote an email asking difficult questions, hoping to minimize the reader’s defensiveness. Yes, by 8:30 AM I had engaged in lots of critical thinking. All this BEFORE I chose to listen to Amy Goodman’s webcast of Democracy Now, democracynow.org or Dr.Cornell West and Tavis Smiley’s show smileyandwest.com/radio.html, two of my personal favorites for critical analysis of world events. Decision making, the implementation of critical thinking, colors our moment-to-moment existence. No wonder Ellen Galinsky highlights this skill in her book, Mind in the Making.

Let’s put some critical thinking into action while discussing the chapter. Let’s use Galinsky’s book to help us in our “ongoing search for valid and reliable knowledge to guide our beliefs and actions” (Galinsky’s definition of critical thinking, p. 204). What issues does Galinsky address? What is her hypothesis, and what information does she use to prove or disprove it? What are her conclusions? And, do we, as Critical Thinkers, have any critique of her claims?

Galinsky posits that knowing when children develop specific evaluative strategies will help us know how to extend their opportunities for development of critical thinking. She spends most of the chapter sharing examples of experiments that demonstrate children’s abilities. Galinsky presents convincing evidence that critical thinking is a natural developmental process that can be stimulated and strengthened by teachers and parents.

WHAT’S VALID AND RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE?

We early childhood educators aren’t surprised to read that 100% of four year olds and 88% of five year olds can be “tricked” into believing that a machine turns toys, photos, and even stuffed animals into something real (toy keys become real keys). We adults continue to struggle with what is true. From big ideas like Weapons of Mass Destruction and Climate Change to small illusions like “there’s this one simple trick to losing 10 pounds this week”, we human beings wrestle with assessing what is true. With our big hopes for the next generation, we want the children we care for to be forewarned, and be better at it than we are. We want them to know how to detect falsehoods, when to trust wholeheartedly, and when not to take NO for an answer. We want our children to know that the first answer is not the final answer.

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Janet Staub is a parent educator at Skagit Valley College. In addition, she facilitates a variety of home-based, play-based, and classroom learning opportunities for children and their adults. She is a recent graduate of the University of Washington School of Nursing’s certificate program in Infant Mental Health. Prior to her move to Whidbey Island, she worked with the City of Seattle’s Child Development programs for over 20 years. She can be reached at janet.staub@gmail.com.

The Seeds of Critical Thinking

Thanks to member Susan Lynch-Ritchie for sharing her thoughtful outline of Chapter 5: Critical Thinking with us!

In Mind in the Making, Ellen Galinsky describes a sequence of emerging skills that children need for optimal cognitive growth and shares how we can support their development. She takes us on a journey through stories of current research and personal experiences to show how each emerging skill grows out of that which came before.

In the beginning Ellen emphasizes the importance of fostering focus, engagement, absorption, and concentration in our babies and young children along with their ability to control their responses to the world without undue anxiety. We follow their eyes, join in their delights, wipe away their tears and the brain gears up. It starts storing data...memories. And it begins to arrange and rearrange those memories in a myriad of connections, unique to each child, fluidly programming itself in a way we could never do for them. And we become witnesses to the astounding, phenomenal blossoming of our own species. Most of us realize that we could never teach a child everything they actually teach themselves. We’d surely succumb to extreme levels of exhaustion!

Yet we are more than witnesses. We are support—must be support...involved in intentional support to help children develop potentials. This is a distinctive message from Ellen Galinsky. She cites research describing remarkable inborn senses and potentialities possessed by our babies and young children for learning about the world: people sense, language sense, space sense, and number sense. Yet these senses need deliberate nurturing. For instance, extra talk with children (pg. 145) makes a difference in their academic success more than socioeconomic status and ethnic background. Limits exist on what children can learn on their own at particular ages.

For me, Ellen’s message brings to mind Vygotsky’s concepts regarding zones of proximal development (the distance between the most difficult task a child can do alone and the most difficult task a child can do with help) and scaffolding (giving help to a child on the edge of learning a new concept, whether it be from an adult or another child).

We know our species takes years to mature in relation to other creatures. Our babies are young for a long time. We’re not primarily creatures of instinct, knowing how to fly upon emergence from a chrysalis, but are creatures of culture with much to learn about how to function within society. Although neurologically gifted and primed to learn in remarkable ways our children need thoughtful scaffolding to become optimally functional within the complexities of modern culture. (And, I might add, more trained teachers in our elementary classrooms beyond what is now considered appropriate adult /child ratios.)

On the road from focus and self control in order to pursue knowledge... to perceiving the frames of mind of others to reach social awareness... to learning to speak and communicate to involve others... to making connections among innumerable experiences for insight and understanding... our children also need to develop the ability to think critically in order to learn what’s valid and reliable to guide their actions and beliefs.

Chapter 5 is a discussion on Critical Thinking... putting it all together to climb mountains without falling. It’s about encouraging a higher-order skill among the executive functions of the brain, disengaging automatic pilot and using all-of-one’s mind to reach pinnacles of thought. I’ve picked out a few things from Chapter 5 to highlight and share with you. First, defining critical thinking...

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Susan Lynch-Ritchie, M. Ed is a graduate of the Erik Erikson Institute in Chicago, a former University Instructor and Lab Teacher at Northern Illinois University, founding director of the Child Care Center at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, and has been an instructor and parent educator. She is currently a Family Home Child Care provider with an all-day preschool program.