The Greatest Political Change In History and Teaching Critical Thinking

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Today was the greatest change in my country's history. Without going into too much detail for fear of making this into a political piece. I was asked by my students on where my allegiance were. Do I support the ruling government or do I support the opposition. Since my students were all at a voting age, I wasn't surprised and was sure that this question would eventually come up.

I thought of the question for a bit and thought that this was a great opportunity to teach them about an essential skill. I figured that the political scene in my country's history would make for a great critical thinking lesson. Now before I continue, I would like to begin first by saying that the lesson was completely apolitical. It is not my job to convince or tell my students who to support which brings me to the first point.

The Decision is Your Own

The first point that I stressed on was that the decision of who to support is ultimately their own. Like many decisions that they make in their lives, there's often no such thing as a clear cut answer. Aside from who to vote for, you have other huge decisions in life from how long you should stay in a job all the way to what kind of phone should you buy, the decision is ultimately your own.

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The reason why this is important is because once you come to the realization that your decision is your own, you realize a few things. First, you are responsible for the decision you make. So if there's a price to pay for your decision, you have no one to blame but yourself. Second, you are allowed to be different from others. If most are deciding on a popular decision and you follow, the only good that comes out of it is that you would suffer or prosper with them. If you do suffer with the rest, you may not be happy about it. Thus, I would rather suffer alone but feel alright about it, then to suffer with others and feeling bad because the decision is not my own.

As I was mentioning all this, I feel that the next follow-up question to my points was the greatest fear of most Asian students. Most fear and worry of being wrong.

What If You Are Wrong?

There were many who were undecided as to who to vote for. One of the biggest fear in such a decision was to vote for the wrong candidate. I pointed out however that being wrong is not the issue. For me, if something was as simple as a choice between right and wrong, most of us would not have an issue in deciding. The problem comes when you can't tell wrong from right and it seems that every decision you make has its consequences.

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I challenged the students to shift their thoughts away from wondering which decision is right or wrong. Instead, think of which decision is the best for you. I linked this to justifying between choosing what to study in university. The only way to tell between a right and wrong decision is after a few long years.

As such, the only 'right' decision is the best decision and to make the best decision, you need make a decision based on a few aspects.

So How Do You Decide?

After setting the stage for quite a while, now comes the 'meat' of the lesson. The decision on which party or candidate to vote on should not be based on feelings nor what others are thinking. It can be very easy to follow along with what the masses think but to truly decide which candidate is best or which decision in life is best. One of the best ways is to start by looking back at history, to see how things were done in the past. To start off, decide on an issue that you want to focus on. It can be on education, jobs and others. Second, compare between how each candidate would or has handled your chosen issue. It is important to focus on the how the issue was handled. This gives you a good idea to evaluate your potential candidates.

As you are evaluating your decision using history as a reference, it is good to be careful what sources you are getting your information from. Blogs and Facebook are great but it is good to mix in some information from other centralized sources. This would give you information that will contribute to your decision making. However, some of these sources may be questionable. As such, you should take all the information you have and finalize your decision.

By this time, you should have a good idea of what decision you are going to go with. To finalize your decision, ask yourself this.. Are you sure? If the answer is yes, then ask yourself why you have chosen to go with that particular decision. If you have a great reason, ask yourself if you are using any logical fallacies on yourself.

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A few logical fallacies that you may be using to justify your decision are as follow:

• False Dilemma/False Dichotomy
• Circular Argument
• Hasty Generalization
• Causal Fallacy

I asked the class on who they would vote for and most of them shouted the name of a particular party. I asked them why and upon hearing their reasons, I pointed out that their arguments were based on the circular argument. They believed that whatever news on Facebook is true and therefore all news on it can be relied on. I pointed out the flaw in their argument, but reiterated that at the end if that is their belief, they should vote for whoever they think can best lead the country.

Conclusion

Now, you may think that it was rather fickle of me to do so. How can I teach critical thinking but still go about leaving that decision in their hands? Well, I believe in equipping my students with the skills to make great decisions (which contributes to their essay writing). However, I am not responsible for any bad nor good decisions my students make. To my students who are often lackadaisical, I tell them that they should do their best for themselves because the one who gets all the glory is them, not me.

Thus, any decision my students make is their own, good or bad. At the end of the class, I wished them all the best and hopefully I have left them with skills that would not only help decide the fate of my country, but hopefully, this helps in their decision making in other aspects of their life.

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