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Recommended: Merits and demerits of critical thinking

The purpose of education is being debated for many years. Many ideas and theories have been developped about this purpose. However, this paper's aim is to focus on two specific approaches in education. First one is the approach of teaching how to think and the other one is the approach of teaching what to think. In my opinion, education teach people how to think rather than what to think because this approach increases the awareness of questioning, improves thinking skills, enhances creativity and broadens human's point of view.

Questioning is the fundamental component of the approach of teaching how to think and significantly improves mental development. Oak mentions that education should let people question what they learnt and education system should be fit in that purpose (2). Gil Cuevas from University of Miami points that a strategy should be applied in classrooms that allows students to ask good questions because he defines good questions as open ended and promotes active learning so applying this strategy can improve students’ problem solving skills (99) / http://merga.net.au/documents/MERJ_4_1_BookReview2.pdf . Moreover, Questions bring more questions and more answers to be found. This is a path in acquiring knowledge. If we take a closer look, it can be seen that efforts in this path leads mental development. As many philosopher said One can only reach wisdom by questioning. Even if we cannot answer all of the questions we asked, we are still questioning many things because questions are more important than answers in that sense. ‘’If education is the process of gathering knowledge, it can never really end as knowledge is infinite and one can never claim to have acquired all of it.’’ (Oak, 1 ). The knowledge is...

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...eople to accept what is right or wrong does not fit into the approach of teaching how to think. It is wiser to let people think why wrongs are wrong, instead of persuading them by giving solid scenarios to make them accept what is wrong.

The approach of teaching how to think is far better than the approach of teaching what to think for the sake of questioning, thinking skills, creativity and giving a better perspective. People learn more and better as they question the information they learnt. Thinking skills are affected by the advantages of enforcing this approach to education as well. Creativity, the primary component of scientific and art development, is boosted by the aid of this approach. People's perspective is extended and people acquire a deep understanding in this approach. Therefore, these ideas justifies the idea of teaching how to think is better.

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