Fostering Critical Thinking in Our Children

In parenting, we always hear buzzwords like “critical thinking” or “think critically”. In this context is about nurturing our children to think critically. We often hear this term as parents due to its importance in developing our children to be the next generation's leaders.

What does critical thinking mean?

It is the ability to compare, contrast, evaluate, understand, organize and classify information. That’s a lot of words, but you get the gist. Critical thinking is mostly applied to solve problems and/or to analyze a piece of information.

It may seem a lot to ask for a child to think critically. Nevertheless, doing it early can set a foundation that should be helpful for their development and future careers. Researchers say to kickstart a child’s critical thinking skill by making logic and scientific reasoning explicit or engaging them in a debate-like situation.

Children are naturally curious yet when they ask us a question, they always expect a straightforward answer. Rephrase the question to be more thought-provoking. Ask them what they think, the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows. This would allow the children to think more deeply about the subject. Present to them some pieces of evidence and logical reasoning so that they can think about other perspectives of the answer as well.

Another great way to develop critical thinking is to open conversations about biases. Kids can still understand how emotions or feelings can affect their judgment in any given situation. The key here is to let them understand and think why they are feeling that and give their reasons why they feel that. For example, if you say to children, what you think about eating insects, they will react and answer that it is disgusting. However, we know that in some parts of the world, this is considered normal.

Eye Level Malaysia has designed its programs for children to apply their critical thinking in Math and English. This rings especially true for math for they have a module called Critical Thinking Math (CTM). The CTM module encourages students to apply the concepts they have learned in different situations for which they would cultivate their problem-solving skills.

Enroll in Eye Level now and get a free diagnostic test to determine your child’s learning level. Find out more at myeyelevel.com or Google Eye Level Malaysia. We have over 100 learning centers in Malaysia so feel free to visit any of them.

This post was brought to you by Eye Level Malaysia.