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...

Downlad the full article to learn more about Chapter 5: Critical Thinking!

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.