My students are bombarded with my lectures on good decision-making. They suffer through seemingly endless talk about why reason is better than opinion, how the facts are better than speculation. All this because I believe that critical thinking is at the heart of an effective education.

I believe in thinking. We live in a time where people can say, “I go with my gut,” and people treat them as if they had leadership ability when the intelligent response is to say, “That’s nice.” and ease them away from any position of authority.

The American Experience is a brief piece of history but its significance has been huge. It is an attempt at allowing a free people to make the critical choices in their lives. America is based on Enlightenment philosophy. This philosophy teaches that humans are capable of improvement and that with the tools of human reason they can free themselves from superstition and false beliefs. These ideas are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Not only that but our educational system, our laws and every idea of improvement espoused by any self-help book are all based on those beliefs.

Give some attention to the Hannibal Blog and what he has to say about thinking.

James Pilant

Find quietude. Observe whatever is around you. If it seems banal, discover it to be fascinating and mysterious. Ignore distractions, otherwise known as ‘everybody else’. Ask simple questions that puzzle you. Be patient in pondering them. That is how I imagine Gregor Mendel might answer us today if we asked him: How  — I mean how! — did you achieve your stunning intellectual breakthroughs, on which we today base our understanding of biology? Put … Read More

via The Hannibal Blog