Critical thinking is an important thinking quality of human beings. Together with creative thinking, it is called the two main driving forces to promote the development of knowledge society in the future. However, in China's education sector, the cultivation of students' critical thinking is paid late attention, especially the research and practice of cultivating students' critical thinking combined with the characteristics of disciplines are still very weak, which leads to the lack of students' critical thinking ability. For example, when students encounter problems in their studies, they don't like to think independently and are highly dependent; Listening to the teacher's conclusion, not good at asking and questioning boldly, not paying attention to learning reasoning and methods; The abstract thinking ability of summarizing things themselves is poor; I like to consider problems according to fixed ideas, and my thinking flexibility is poor and my adaptability is weak; More active concentrated thinking, less backward divergent thinking, and so on. History is a humanities and social discipline. If we observe and analyze historical events and historical figures from different class positions and different perspectives, we will often draw different conclusions. This feature determines that it will play an important role in cultivating students' critical thinking. How to strengthen the cultivation of students' critical thinking ability in history teaching is a problem worthy of discussion.

First, the understanding of critical thinking in history.

In the past two decades, western developed countries, represented by the United States, have attached great importance to the study of critical thinking, and they have formulated many teaching procedures aimed at cultivating students' critical thinking. However, what is critical thinking is still inconclusive. Showing a trend of a hundred schools of thought contending. Ernest pointed out in the article "Logical Basis of Critical Thinking Skills Measurement": "Critical thinking refers to an individual's judgment on the authenticity, accuracy, nature and value of the knowledge he has learned." Educator Beye pointed out what is critical thinking in his article: "Critical thinking includes not only a specific brain activity, but also a way of thinking." It can be seen that critical thinking is a process of active thinking, the essence of a way of thinking and thinking skills, its essence is doubt, analysis and critical examination, and it is a thinking activity that questions existing opinions and conclusions, so as to make reasonable decisions on what to do and what to believe.

Critical thinking in history discipline means that students should not only accept and remember historical facts and conclusions expressed in textbooks, but also try to think deeply and critically about historical events and historical figures like historians and try to give more reasonable explanations. To this end, they should sort out all kinds of well-documented viewpoints and think about how specific historical events happened, what people did, why they did it, the historical background of such actions, and the impact on people and society now and in the future. As the researchers pointed out, historical knowledge requires teachers and students to provide complete and meaningful historical insights. Students should acquire historical knowledge from a more comprehensive and critical perspective. Only when students learn critical thinking and viewpoint selection in history study can they really learn knowledge and apply what they have learned.

Second, the historical significance of critical thinking.

(A) help to cultivate and develop students' innovative thinking.

The new curriculum reform takes cultivating students' innovative consciousness, innovative spirit and innovative ability as one of the important goals, which are inseparable from innovative thinking. Historical innovative thinking is the thinking that students face complicated historical information, and on the basis of dialectical thinking, reverse thinking, divergent thinking and associative thinking, they produce a new concept, make new judgments, new explanations and new assumptions, and can carry out logical verification. Its core is to know the general from the individual and the inevitable from the accident. Critical thinking is the premise of historical innovative thinking, because innovation is often based on the criticism of old ideas or things. In the process of innovation, critical thinking can play the role of navigation and escort. It can dredge thinking channels, expand thinking space, provide thinking methods and improve thinking efficiency. Galileo's theory of free fall is an innovation, which is based on questioning and reflecting on the old theory. Copernicus's "Heliocentrism" is innovation, which is based on the criticism of the original "geocentric theory". Einstein's theory of relativity is the greatest innovation in the 20th century, and this innovation is also inseparable from the excellent quality of critical thinking. The great genius once said, "I have no special talent, but I like to explore problems." This is the essential feature of critical thinking.

(B) conducive to the survival and development of students in the information age.

2 1 century is a rapidly developing information age. On the one hand, the rapid spread of information meets people's desire to learn knowledge and understand information; On the other hand, information full of violence, superstition, pornography, pseudoscience and other negative contents has also caused adverse effects on people. Without questioning, reflection and criticism, it is inevitable to be deceived by false knowledge, false science and false truth. Bernard Shaw said, "Beware of all false knowledge, which is more dangerous than ignorance." Specific to the historical field, there are many forms of historical fashion culture that people like to see and hear at present, such as "telling the truth", "telling the goods" and "joking". However, many methods are used in "Joking" and a lot of cultural rubbish is created. Even the history of Pin Shuo is bound by subjective factors, which inevitably contains the elements of game words. Without critical thinking ability, students can only be in a state of passive acceptance, blind obedience and conformity. Therefore, history teachers must have a correct and rigorous attitude towards history, help students learn to question and reflect, learn to think and judge independently, and cultivate their critical thinking ability, which is not only books, teachers, kitsch and experts' obedience, so as to enhance students' ability to distinguish and identify all kinds of information, resist the influence of various negative thoughts and improve their social adaptability.

(3) Help students form a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values.

An important task of history teaching is to cultivate the basic quality of citizens and form a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values through the study of history classes. Having independent value judgment ability and knowing how to make rational choices according to social development and changes is one of the important manifestations of good citizen quality. Cultivating critical thinking is the way to form independent values. Because you have the ability of critical thinking and are good at using critical thinking, you will correctly analyze historical events, historical figures and social phenomena and make an evaluation that conforms to Marxism and objective reality. "The most important role of critical thinking training is to cultivate students' independent thinking and judgment ability to make reasonable decisions about what to do and what to believe. "Once students have a correct understanding of society and a correct judgment of the world and life, they will form a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values.

Third, how to cultivate students' historical critical thinking.

Critical thinking refers to the thinking ability to use relevant knowledge and corresponding strategies in front of information, critically examine it, and then make your own judgment and evaluation. This ability can only be acquired through certain training. Only through conscious training and a large number of repeated exercises can the character of critical thinking be internalized into one's own thinking habits. So, how can history discipline cultivate students' critical thinking? Based on the characteristics of history discipline and critical thinking, the author made a useful attempt.

(A) to create a democratic and equal classroom environment

Fick Milan once said: "The cultivation of students' critical thinking ability ultimately depends on whether teachers can create an environment for students and stimulate them to think critically. "Teaching democracy is the premise of forming critical thinking. The long-term exam-oriented education has turned students into "containers" for passively accepting knowledge. They don't think, question, ask questions, and they don't criticize what teachers teach. This situation must change. As a teacher, we should first emancipate our minds, renew our ideas, put the whole teaching process in a democratic, equal and open environment, respect students' personality, encourage students to question and guess boldly, dare to express opinions different from teachers, and dare to "find faults" and "be unconventional". Don't easily deny the new ideas and ideas put forward by students, let alone reprimand them. Be good at discovering reasonable factors in their thinking, and praise and encourage them in time. For example, when studying the content of "famous thinkers in ancient times", I asked students to discuss Confucius. According to the textbook, some people think: "Confucius was a great educator in ancient China." However, some students disagree with this assertion and think that Confucius can't be called a great educator, because "there are 3,000 disciples of Confucius, and only 72 are successful", and the teaching effect is quite poor, so he can't be called a great educator. Obviously, both of these answers are reasonable. In short, as long as the external environment of students' study and life is relaxed, students' personality can be fully developed, their sharpness and independence of thinking will be developed, and their critical thinking will be strengthened day by day.

(B) to cultivate students' awareness of critical thinking

Critical thinking consciousness refers to the attitude, tendency and will of critical thinking, that is, to have critical spirit. This spirit includes the following elements: (1) independence: have your own ideas and opinions and don't listen to other people's suggestions; (2) Full of self-confidence: believe in yourself and be brave in facing difficulties; (3) Willing to think: thinking positively and being good at asking questions; (4) Don't be superstitious about authority: Truth is relative, and you should question the knowledge in books and the authoritative views of experts and scholars. (5) Open mind: broaden your horizons and knowledge, and be good at accepting all kinds of useful information; (6) Respect others: Today's society is a pluralistic society, allowing different ideas and viewpoints to collide and coexist. While criticizing, we should respect the intellectual achievements and thoughts of others. To cultivate students' critical thinking consciousness, teachers should first be a critical thinker with critical spirit and critical thinking ability. In preparing lessons, we should carefully examine the ideas absorbed in the current textbooks with the concept of keeping pace with the times, and even conduct critical analysis and exploration, so as to break the stereotype of students and guide their thinking to a wider world, which is of great benefit to the cultivation of students' critical thinking. For example, when studying several clear ruling periods in history, such as "the rule of Wenjing", "the prosperous time of Kaiyuan" and "the prosperous time of Kanggan", we should not only tell the general idea that the rulers adopted moderate ruling policies, increased population and reclaimed a large number of wasteland, but also make such an analysis: in the case of underdeveloped productive forces in ancient times, reclaiming wasteland can alleviate the social contradictions intensified by land merger and stabilize the social and economic order. But in the long run, it destroys the ecological environment of agriculture, accelerates the process of soil desertification and causes soil erosion. It can be said that it is a resource-exhausted fishing policy, which is not conducive to the sustainable development of agricultural production. In this way, students will find that treating history with questioning attitude will lead to many different interpretations of historical phenomena. In the long run, students' awareness of critical thinking will continue to increase.

(C) to carry out research-based learning activities in history

Historical inquiry learning is an active inquiry learning, which mainly means that students, under the guidance of teachers, use some principles and methods of scientific research to discover, ask, analyze and solve problems by collecting, analyzing and judging a large amount of information, so as to acquire knowledge and develop their thinking ability and creativity. It is student-centered. A teaching model that allows students to participate in the whole process of experiencing and solving problems. The implementation process is the theme chosen by teachers or teachers and students, and the student research group completes it through the stages of establishing research topics, formulating research plans, implementing research plans, forming research results, and displaying and communicating the results. Through the research study of history, we can cultivate students' critical thinking in the following aspects: (1) In the process of searching for information and collecting information. Remind students to look at the collected information with a critical eye, so as to eliminate the false and retain the true, choose carefully and choose the information reasonably; (2) On the basis of careful analysis of relevant information, encourage students not to be afraid of books and authority, dare to be unconventional and boldly put forward their own opinions; (3) Guide students to discuss and debate in the process of solving historical problems, think critically about their own and other students' views, and promote the solution of problems through mutual questioning and refutation; (4) Reflect on the thinking process of the formation of the results, fill in the gaps by checking, improve the results and improve together. Therefore, historical inquiry learning is an ideal mode to cultivate students' critical thinking.

(D) organizing extracurricular activities in history to broaden students' knowledge horizons.

The accumulation and digestion of knowledge is the material basis of thinking. The more knowledge you accumulate. The higher the sensitivity and independence of thinking, the greater the consciousness of critical thinking. Therefore, teachers should try their best to organize extracurricular activities, so that students can further understand and master the contents of classroom teaching and acquire as much knowledge as possible outside books to broaden their horizons. For example, collecting historical materials and writing small historical papers, writing social investigation reports on historical themes, writing biographies of historical figures, and organizing discussions and debates around research topics. No matter what form, students are the main body. Students carry out activities independently or cooperatively, which provides students with a space for thinking, questioning and exploring history, which is conducive to students' active participation in the whole process of history learning, broadening their knowledge horizons and promoting the development of students' critical thinking.

In short, the significance of critical thinking is significant and far-reaching. History teachers have the responsibility and obligation to take concrete measures and methods in history teaching, cultivate students' critical thinking ability and improve students' quality in an all-round way to meet the needs of future social development.