What Is Critical Thinking and Why Is It Important Today?

Agenda:
8:00 a.m. Open networking
8:15 a.m. Meeting will start
8:30 a.m. Presentation

~~~~~ Presentation ~~~~~
What Is Critical Thinking and Why Is It Important Today?
Video presentations and discussion

In America we do not seem to teach Critical Thinking in school. At best, we assess whether a student arrives at the best answer which might indicate critical thinking. Most of our education focuses on memorization rather than teaching critical thinking and problem solving.

Today we are surrounded by a flood of messaging, advertising, ambiguous information, misinformation, hypotheses, propaganda, raw data, images, deep-fake images, unverified internet postings, AI-generated interpretation of internet postings, opinions portrayed as fact, anecdotal stories portrayed as scientific evidence, quotes out of context, imputed motivation of others, gaslighting, fact-denying, doubt-sowing, conspiracy theorizing and propagation. How do we process this cloud of information and misinformation to discriminate fact from fiction and make logical rather than emotional or knee-jerk decisions?

Critical thinking, logical decision-making, and clear fact-based communication are important to our personal relationships, financial decisions, societal stability, and good governance.

So what is Critical Thinking and how do we improve our critical thinking?

We will be watching some videos on the skill of critical thinking and discussing how we can improve our critical thinking skills and encourage critical thinking in others.