Savvy Women

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

After rereading my June 29 blog post, it occurs to me that I didn’t spend enough time thinking about the Linda Elder quote I bolded.  The quote I’m referring to is this one:  “Yet the quality of our life and all of the decisions we make depend precisely on the quality of our thought.”

I want to spend a little more time in this week’s entry thinking about that quote and about how our lives are shaped by the thinking that we do.

I truly believe that we all have the power to determine who we want to become and the direction we want our lives to take.  Notice that I used the verb “to become” rather than “to be” in the previous sentence.  “Becoming” suggests growth and change and is a dynamic word.  “Being,” on the other hand, sounds very finished and static.

There have been a few times in my own life when I felt like the Troy that I was just wasn’t the Troy I wanted to be or needed to be.  One of those times came in 1993.  At that time in my life, I was terribly bored and unfulfilled and felt that my life lacked imagination.  I felt empty and alone.  I felt like I needed to undergo something akin to a radical spiritual makeover.

That dissatisfaction with my life prompted me to think about how I might live differently.  I eventually hit upon the idea that I could leave my job, my family, and even my country.  That thought led me to apply to the Peace Corps. Eventually, after passing all the rigorous exams required by the government during the application stage, I was accepted to become a Volunteer trainee.  Washington, D.C. then sent me overseas to live and work in Poland.

That marked the end of the Troy that I was.  A new Troy was born from that experience.

OK, I’ll cut to the chase.  Notice that I bolded “dissatisfaction” and “think” and “idea” two paragraphs earlier.  That’s because the change in my life started as a vague feeling I wasn’t reaching my full potential as a human being.  That feeling then led to the idea (the conception) that I could live differently.  That idea then became a plan which I fleshed out after much soul-searching.  Once I acted upon that plan, I found myself on the path to a spiritual rebirthing.

I truly believe (because I’ve seen it happen several times in my own life) that all of us can literally become new people by re-imagining ourselves.  Thought can lead to action which can then produce transformation and growth.

The important thing is that all renewal begins as an idea of renewal. Linda Elder is right.  The quality of our lives depends upon the quality of the thought we put into living.  Think creatively, and it is more likely that you’ll live creatively too…

What or who would you like to become?

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

I want to begin this blog by asking women with school-aged children a direct question:  Do you think your kids are receiving a good education?

I want to follow that up by asking educators:  Are your students getting the sort of schooling they need to succeed in work and life?

Linda Elder, president of a nonprofit organization called Foundation for Critical Thinking and author of “Are You a Critical Thinker?” (which appeared in a recent issue of The Christian Science Monitor), believes that the teaching of critical thinking skills is vitally important today because we live in a world that is plagued by many problems that require fresh problem-solving approaches. On the current state of the teaching of critical thinking, Elder writes:

Everyone thinks; but we don’t always think well. In fact, much of our thinking, left to itself, is sloppy, distorted, partial, uninformed, or prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and all of the decisions we make depend precisely on the quality of our thought. At present, the act of thinking is virtually ignored (emphasis added).

Elder then defines “critical thinking” as

…self-guided, self-disciplined thinking that aims to take the reasoning we all do naturally to a higher level. It is the art of analyzing and evaluating with the goal of improving thought. When making a decision, it is the difference between weighing information to come to a logical conclusion and making snap judgments without understanding the information.

As someone who’s been in the teaching business for a heck of a long time, I can say I agree that we need to teach critical thinking, but I don’t think the “establishment” will ever get fully behind the idea of teaching it until it is ready to accept the large societal changes that will come when more of us think this way.

What, exactly, do I mean by this?  Well, let me begin by saying that Elder’s definition of “critical thinking” is very vague and superficial.

Critical thinking is actually this:  It is the questioning of all firmly held beliefs.  (In fact, critical thinking means accepting nothing at face value.)  Critical thinking is the development of rigorous methods of inquiry that begin with the following argument:  “All things are to be rejected (or viewed skeptically) until proven true.”

In practice, critical thinking
•    Is antiauthority (and thus “threatening”)
•    Is fundamentally “radical”
•    Scares the political establishment (and all sorts of “establishments”)
•    Promotes analysis over immediate compliance

Critical thinkers, in other words, are not mindless automatons who accept all rules without question.

I want to conclude by calling for ideas about how our educational system can be improved.  Is critical thinking the answer?  Or would you fix the system some other way?  (Maybe you would like to take issue with me saying the system is broken and needs fixing?)

Please post your suggestions or send them to me via email (contact@savvy-women-magazine.com).

Take care and happy thinking!