Critical thinking is an important cultural concept in our time. More and more people realize that it is an indispensable foundation for the democratic spirit and scientific spirit of a harmonious society. Especially in the field of education, the value of critical thinking is becoming more and more obvious.

American sociologist sumner said: "Critical ability education is the only education that can be called cultivating good citizens." UNESCO invited more than 500 educators around the world to list their most important educational goals. In their educational goal of 16, "critical thinking ability" ranks second. In the 1940s, critical thinking became the theme of American education reform. In 1970s, critical thinking became the focus of American education reform. In 1980s, critical thinking became the core idea of American education reform. Critical thinking is or has become the theme of contemporary education.

What is the significance of critical thinking education? Foster, president of Harvard University, said at the opening ceremony: "The goal of education is to ensure that students can distinguish' someone is talking nonsense'."

Critical thinking is characterized by reflection and questioning.

Critical thinking is characterized by reflection and questioning. Reflection is to take thinking as the object of thinking. "Whales are fish" is not reflection; "Whales are not fish" is not reflection; "Fish breathe with gills, whales don't breathe with gills, so whales are not fish", which is not reflection. "Fish breathe with gills, whales don't breathe with gills, so' whales are fish' is wrong." This is reflection. The object of thinking here is the judgment that whales are fish. "The argument that whales are fish because their names contain the word fish" cannot be established, because the names of things may not reflect the characteristics of things ",which is a typical reflection. The object of thinking here is the argument that whale is a fish, because its name contains the word fish.

The starting point of reflection is questioning. To reflect, we must question: Is the topic or conclusion valid? Is there a reason? Is the reason valid? Can the reason support the conclusion? Is there an implicit premise? Does the implied premise hold? In other words, the judgment must be suspended first. Russell, a British writer and logician, saw that the British textbook said that Napoleon's defeat was attributed to the British, while the German textbook said that Napoleon's defeat was attributed to the Germans, so he advocated that students compare the two textbooks. Some people worry that this will make students feel at a loss. Russell said, "If students can't blindly believe, education will succeed." Qian Yingyi, Dean of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, talked about how Maskin, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics, guided students' academic papers. "You put forward a point, there is a loophole. He immediately asked, "Why?" ? 10 minutes later, you can only give an answer or go back and modify it. "

The purpose of critical thinking is to seek truth and choose good, and seeking truth is more essential. The fundamental value of critical thinking lies in knowledge, belief and cognition. Critical thinking can improve IQ and make people smarter. People with critical thinking are often independent in spirit, do not believe in authority, do not follow the rules, and will not tolerate calling a deer a horse.

Critical thinking helps to improve emotional intelligence.

The core of critical thinking is logic. The main content of critical thinking is the evaluation and construction of arguments. Argumentation is the application of logical reasoning, and critical thinking belongs to the category of logical application. Of course, it also means that critical thinking is not only logic, but also richer than logic and needs specific analysis. The essence of logic lies in the reasoning validity of premises and conclusions, generally regardless of whether the premises or conclusions are true or false. Critical thinking should not only pay attention to whether reasoning is effective, but also pay attention to the truth of conclusions or premises, even the truth of implied premises.

The soul of critical thinking is human reason. Only human beings can reflect and take thinking itself as the object of thinking. The essence of critical thinking is that no thought can be immune from being questioned, and at the same time, any thought has the right to defend itself. Logic itself is the profound embodiment of human rationality, which is both instrumental rationality and more valuable rationality.

The concept of critical thinking is becoming more and more "hot", and some misunderstandings have also arisen. It is necessary to clarify these misunderstandings in order to accurately grasp critical thinking and develop critical thinking education healthily.

The name or translation of critical thinking has been puzzling many people. Some people translate critical thinking into "critical thinking" or "critical thinking". In fact, critical thinking does not point to negation. Critical thinking emphasizes questioning, distrust and not blindly following, but at the same time critical thinking is not without any negative significance. Questioning is actually a test with a certain negative tendency, or a negative attempt. Try whether the object of reflection can be overthrown, and believe it only if it cannot be overthrown. This is called reasonable doubt and reasonable belief. Debono, a British thinking educator, pointed out that only taking criticism as a kind of judgment or evaluation actually weakens the main value of critical thinking-showing truth and truth by attacking and eliminating all pretenses. Therefore, critical thinking may be the best translation.

Is critical thinking related to emotional intelligence? Due to the positive influence of critical thinking, some people like to add positive emotional factors to critical thinking. For example, some people regard "taking responsibility" as the characteristic of critical thinking. The result is to blindly expand the connotation of critical thinking, artificially complicate the problem, and even make people daunting. It should be noted that the essence of critical thinking is thinking, which is thinking process, thinking method, thinking ability and thinking quality. And "taking responsibility" is an emotional factor, not a necessary connotation of critical thinking. Some people may ask: Is critical thinking irrelevant to emotional intelligence? Of course. Critical thinking can improve emotional intelligence. Questioning and reflection contribute to people's spiritual independence, and high emotional intelligence can also promote critical thinking.

Critical thinking education to prevent logic from being diluted.

Critical thinking is closely related to logic. Some critical thinking research and critical thinking education in China tend to dilute logic. This not only violates the cultural demand of cultivating rational spirit in critical thinking education, but also violates the internal mechanism and law of the formation and development of critical thinking ability. The logical truth from premise to conclusion and the logical falsehood from conclusion to premise are both necessary conditions for questioning and evaluating argumentation. Critical thinking needs flexibility and rigidity. Without rigidity, elasticity will become random. Fundamentally speaking, the knowledge and belief pursued by critical thinking and the human rationality highlighted come from logic.

Therefore, the theoretical interpretation of critical thinking should highlight the core position and value of logic. The training of critical thinking should strengthen the necessary logical knowledge and ability. Teachers who study critical thinking, if they have no logic foundation, should make up logic courses, which will get twice the result with half the effort. It is positive and enterprising to add critical thinking course on the basis of logic course in college curriculum; It is a retrogression to replace logic course with critical thinking course. If logic course and critical thinking course insist on one, then we would rather have logic than critical thinking. People with logical literacy can gradually develop critical thinking in thinking practice; People without logical literacy can never have good critical thinking.

It is more difficult to infiltrate the subject teaching.

The core literacy of students' development in China already contains the connotation of critical thinking, such as rational thinking, critical questioning, independent thinking, independent judgment, respect for facts and evidence, and clear logic. Under the item of "developing logical thinking", the Chinese curriculum standard of ordinary senior high schools has the expressions of "using critical thinking to examine speech works" and "using basic language rules and logical rules to analyze and judge language". This is a positive expression of conforming to the world cultural trend, and it is also clearly targeted in reality.

Pan Yong, a professor at Zhejiang Normal University, wrote "The Absence and Cultivation of Creative Culture Genes", which made an in-depth perspective on the situation of American college entrance examination in China. He pointed out: "The biggest defect of China students is that the correct rate is only 23.30% on the issue of' comparative evaluation argument'." He added: "Critical reading with independent comments as the core has obviously become a reading bottleneck for China students."

Critical thinking education in primary and secondary schools can offer simple critical thinking courses, but more importantly, it permeates the daily teaching of various disciplines. In fact, the infiltration of subject teaching is more difficult than setting up critical thinking courses directly.

At the inaugural meeting of the Logic Education Committee of the Chinese Logic Society held some time ago, I said: "Teachers should realize that logic and critical thinking are not the burden of teaching, but the treasure knife and wine of teaching. Teaching with thinking content and logical methods is a smooth road to teaching and a broad road to teaching. The difficulty of logic education and critical thinking education lies in how to combine the factors of logic and critical thinking with specific disciplines and specific teaching contents naturally and harmoniously.