On Critical Thinking (21 July 2003)

A man and his son are driving home one day when they get into a terrible accident. The man dies on the way to the hospital, but the son can be saved by emergency surgery. The surgeon on duty takes one look at the boy and walks out of the theatre, saying to the nurses: "I can't operate. That's my son."

This is an old chestnut, but effective. Some of us at COB, when teaching our students about logic, include it as a test of their critical thinking skills. When you know the trick, the answer is obvious, but otherwise it seems to be baffling. Again and again we find that students don’t see through the problem, can’t see what becomes obvious the moment you realize that the point from which you start to reason is fundamental to the solution of the puzzle.

The answer, of course, is that the surgeon’s a woman. I’ve seen the problem posed with a pilot (different scenario; the man and his son are passengers on the plane), but it doesn’t really matter; the trick lies in the assumptions you hold in order to arrive at your conclusion. People who are too blinded by their own assumptions, who have limited their ability to see the world from various angles, are going to be stumped by these and other problems requiring critical thinking.

During the first Gulf War, I had the pleasure of being homeroom teacher to a group of ninth graders, who were enthusiastic, imaginative, and troublesome because they were so bright. One day, during a class discussion about current affairs, one particularly intelligent young woman asked me why the CIA hadn't assassinated Saddam Hussein yet, why they were sending all those soldiers to the Gulf when all they had to do was send one sniper.

"It's not as easy as you think," I replied. “They’d have to get in range of him without being killed first.”

"Oh, no," she told me. "The Americans have this gun that they can use to scope out a person miles and miles away. They could be in Israel and they could still shoot Saddam in Iraq."

After I collected my teeth from the floor, I asked her where she got her information. Her answer: a television show. And not a news programme or anything like that — a popular action programme on the level of McGyver.

"Oh, yes," I told her. "And by the way, tell your parents I know somebody who has a bridge to sell."

They didn't get it, so a couple of days later I told the class a deliberate lie. It was a good lie; it began with a truth, and twisted it and added things so that it sounded believable but was completely false. Being the enthusiastic and imaginative students that they were, they believed me.

A day or so later I told them the truth. There was silence, and then a hand crept up.

"But Miss Bethel," said its owner, "yesterday you said—"

"I know," I said. "I lied."

I know there are those of you out there who are probably aghast at my action. After all, a teacher who lies to her students is betraying a sacred trust. I agree with you. That's why I did it. You see, I believe that the greatest gift I can give any group of young minds is the ability to think critically. And the first step to critical thinking is the refusal to take anything — no matter who tells it to you — at face value.

The most important question, I believe, that a person can ask herself about any "fact" is: how do I know? Sadly, though, it is one of the rarest questions asked. I am continually astounded by the students I meet at the College of The Bahamas whose information-hoard consists of nuggets gleaned from church, American television, close friends, and radio talk shows. Too many of them rely on tabloid newspapers for their "factual" information; too many of them believe that the more emphatically a person makes a statement the more true that statement is; too many of them judge the correctness of an idea on the basis of the position of the person who has the idea. Almost none of them have taken the time to find out for themselves.

I believe that one reason why it is becoming so difficult to find people in the service industry who, when confronted with a problem, can solve it without resorting to their superiors, is that we are not training our children or ourselves to be critical thinkers. It is possible to argue that this passivity has some historical basis — after all, for the slaves from whom many of us are descended it was as much as their lives were worth to ask "Why?" — but I would like to give our ancestors more credit than that. It takes a critical thinker to act spontaneously, to trust his own judgement enough to make a decision, to satisfy a customer without passing the buck. People who have spent their whole lives accepting without question what others have told them, doing as they are told, repeating procedures exactly as they learned them, are unprepared to cope with the unexpected. When faced with something unusual, these people become helpless.

Now I am not advocating anarchy here; far from it. I am advocating understanding the whys of the world. Rather than simply following instructions, it is healthy, it is crucial, to understand why those instructions make sense. Children know this to be true; anyone who has tried to give a two-year-old a direct order will recognize that it is human to ask "Why?" Now I know I am flying in the face of generations of accepted wisdom. I too have read the Royal Reader story about the little girl playing on the train track who, when her mother called her, obeyed at once, thereby missing being killed by a train. But I am not convinced that teaching children to be unquestioningly obedient is a good thing; it creates sheep, not people.

In the classroom, I do my best to show my students the benefits of critical thought. In my classroom, I tell them, I am the ultimate sceptic; my mind is a blank slate, and I believe nothing that they have not demonstrated to be valid. And when I challenge them with what seem to me to be simple questions — how do you know Cable Bahamas owes ZNS money that it hasn't paid? How do you know that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexual activity? How do you know that Iraq is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction? How do you know that the constitution says that the Bahamas is a Christian nation? — and their answers are Because the talk show host/my pastor/CNN/my uncle said so, I know that it's time to start telling them some careful, believable lies.

Because the answers to these questions are actually quite simple. It takes very little to pick up the telephone and check up on a "fact" that a newspaper has reported. All one needs is a Bible and a concordance to find out all that the Holy Book has to say about any topic at all. The Bahamian Constitution can be purchased for a few dollars, or can be found in the Archives or any public library; and the BBC and the CBC will provide very different views of world affairs than American-run news agencies. We are fortunate enough to be living in a wealthy nation in the Information Age; to be ignorant is a matter of choice. So if my students choose to believe the lies I craft for them, and they don't check my facts for themselves, then they deserve to be duped.

Here's another brainteaser.

A prosecutor is questioning two witnesses. The first one tells nothing but lies; the second one tells nothing but the truth. What single question can the prosecutor ask them to find out which is which?

Don't worry if you can't figure it out. The answer's out there, if you know where to look for it.