Raising Critical Thinkers: A Parent's Guide to Growing Wise Kids in the Digital Age
by Julie Bogart
No matter how you slice it, games themselves (of all sorts) are powerful as critical thinking skill-builders for several reasons: 1. The rules of a game act as a reassuring framework for play. Players know what to expect and how to behave inside the confines of that system. They learn respect for boundaries. 2. Each action taken alters the course of the game. No two game plays are alike. Opportunities to innovate and create are served up regularly. 3. Strategies vary depending on the strength or weakness of a player’s position at any point in the game. Everyone hopes to be in the strong position eventually, so they keep playing. 4. Most games make use of basic mathematics—counting, combining, multiplying, dividing, spatial awareness, bidding, resource management, logic, strategizing, even map reading. 5. Games encourage autonomy: taking responsibility for one’s actions and experiencing the consequences immediately when those actions succeed or fail. In fact, research shows that students enjoy the experience of exercising control (autonomy) when faced with gaming challenges. A variety of perspectives fosters breakthrough insights, too. To raise critical thinkers, always look for more to think about, more to consider. Here are some useful questions to ask yourself: When I look at our bookshelves, what world do I see reflected in our book choices? Which books reflect our experiences to my children? Which books help my child know and learn about experiences different from ours? Have I included books that explore music, science, history, geography, food, math, and art? Do I have books written based in research as well as those written with firsthand experience?
Firsts have a way of stamping themselves onto our identities. They are memorable because they’re startlingly new. Other encounters provide a steady drip, drip, drip of provocation sustained over a period of time—like raising a child or performing a longitudinal research study or moving overseas. Encounters provoke us to think again, to expand to include, to appreciate more, and to reconsider.
Read the last page of a picture book first. Then ask, “What do we understand about the story by knowing the last page before the beginning? What do you expect this book to be about?” Then read the book and compare. Try it again with another book, only pick any random page to read first. Ask again: “What can be known about the story from this one glimpse?” Read the book. Ask: “Were we right?”
The next step is to polish one of these freewrites into a five-hundred-word personal reflection piece. The goal is to wrestle with or identify the idea that has “stuck.” Get it on paper and tell your teens to let their minds go in any direction they want to go. Deep reading and open-ended reflection lay a great foundation for the deeper work of critical thinking.
“The seemingly innocuous features . . . —the ‘like’ and ‘heart’ buttons that signal appreciation and affection, the swipe gestures that refresh the screen with new information, the ‘streak’ counts that tally exchanges with friends, the infinite scrolls of stuff—are variations on psychological-conditioning techniques pioneered by slot-machine makers.
Political commentator Ezra Klein shared on his podcast that he had to buy a safe with an alarm clock timer to house his cell phone when he decided to read a book so that his mind knew absolutely that he could not access it even if he wanted to. That’s how powerful the brain drain can be if we rely on our devices eight plus hours a day.
"No matter how you slice it, games themselves (of all sorts) are powerful as critical thinking skill-builders for several reasons: 1. The rules of a game act as a reassuring framework for play. Players know what to expect and how to behave inside the confines of that system. They learn respect for boundaries. 2. Each action taken alters the course of the game. No two game plays are alike. Opportunities to innovate and create are served up regularly. 3. Strategies vary depending on the strength or weakness of a player’s position at any point in the game. Everyone hopes to be in the strong position eventually, so they keep playing. 4. Most games make use of basic mathematics—counting, combining, multiplying, dividing, spatial awareness, bidding, resource management, logic, strategizing, even map reading. 5. Games encourage autonomy: taking responsibility for one’s actions and experiencing the consequences immediately when those actions succeed or fail. In fact, research shows that students enjoy the experience of exercising control (autonomy) when faced with gaming challenges."
"A variety of perspectives fosters breakthrough insights, too. To raise critical thinkers, always look for more to think about, more to consider. Here are some useful questions to ask yourself: When I look at our bookshelves, what world do I see reflected in our book choices? Which books reflect our experiences to my children? Which books help my child know and learn about experiences different from ours? Have I included books that explore music, science, history, geography, food, math, and art? Do I have books written based in research as well as those written with firsthand experience?"
"Word Play Pick any end-rhyme scheme (like “ay” or “end”). Recite with your children as many rhyming words (even nonsense terms) in a row as you can for that one ending. Count them and see if you can break your record using a different ending rhyme. How many of the terms are made up for fun, and how many are words we use in English? Try them in sentences, even the nonsense words. What do they mean? How do you know? Are some of the words describing things? Are some of them items you have in the house? Are some of the words actions you can take?"
"To have an open mind suggests that we can meaningfully separate our emotions, our thoughts, our body sensations, our community identity and loyalty to that group, and our well-established sense of right and wrong from what we study. The truth is, human beings are not good at it—at all. Our biases, unchecked, control our thinking. An injunction to do better doesn’t fix it. We’re bad at convincing ourselves to be open to ideas that contradict what we expect to be true. It takes some other disposition to crack open our minds."
"Deep-Reading Steps 1. Turn off distractions. (Phones go in a basket in the other room.) 2. Read the pages in the book in order. 3. Read them at a comfortable pace. (This isn’t a race.) 4. Read without asking questions or getting up to snack. 5. Read with family together (training wheels). 6. After some sustained reading skill is attained, encourage reading at night in bed (expert level). 7. Gradually increase the reading time, starting with five to seven minutes. (Set a timer.)"
"Select a single word from today’s reading and write about it. For instance, the reading may be about “individuality” or “injustice.” Put the key term at the top of the page and write. Each time you feel stuck, rewrite the word at the start of another line and go again. It may also be helpful to turn the page landscape view, using a blank sheet of paper without lines, and write inside balloons or bubbles as a way to cluster various thoughts."
"It takes deliberate effort to make space for someone else’s quite different background as they report how they see the world from where they stand. We’re all interpreting all the time, and we don’t all have the same level of skill in every subject domain. Moreover, we don’t all interpret the same information the same ways. It’s possible to use the same words or identical symbols and intend entirely different meanings."
- →Political commentator Ezra Klein shared on his podcast that he had to buy a safe with an alarm clock timer to house his cell phone when he decided to read a book so that his mind knew absolutely that he could not access it even if he wanted to. That’s how powerful the brain drain can be if we rely on our devices eight plus hours a day.
- →They take what he calls “responsible risks.” These thinkers will select experiences for themselves that require a high degree of flexibility, spontaneity, and possible failure. They use previous experiences and background information to help them assess the safety of the risk. They improvise, innovate, and stretch their imaginations.
- →Where experience centers you (I’m a tourist looking for tourist attractions designed for me), an encounter decenters you (I’m an expatriate living abroad, butchering the language, and trying to fit into the local customs). You get to choose your experiences. You don’t always get to choose your encounters.
- →They learn to think like problem-solvers rather than only answer-givers. Savvy teachers and parents can ask questions like these: Are there other ways to approach this problem? Can you show me? What real-world situation might require using this mathematical operation? Why do you think this process works?
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