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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children

Author: Linda Elder


Order from Treely Green Publishing:


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(SKU 005- ELDER-04)


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Phone: +1 805 883 8295


An excellent book for children that makes the concepts of critical thinking clear and easy to understand.


Fairminded Fran, Naive Nancy and Selfish Sam teach children about critical thinking – what it is, and why it's important. This book tells children that critical thinkers think about their thinking. They look for problems in their thinking. They practice thinking just like players practice basketball or baseball. This book is an excellent teaching tool for children.

$18.99



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The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children

Additional Information About:
The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children

Why A Critical Thinking Mini-Guide For Children?

From a young age, children are capable of learning some of the foundational critical thinking concepts and skills. Though they are largely egocentric, children can nevertheless begin to think about how their behavior affects other people. They can begin to take thinking apart (to focus, for example, on purpose, questions, information, inferences, in thinking). They can begin to apply intellectual standards to their thinking (such as clarity, accuracy, relevance, and logicalness). They can begin to develop intellectual virtues (such as intellectual perseverance, intellectual humility, and intellectual integrity).

The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children introduces children to some of the most basic concepts in critical thinking, making these concepts accessible to them through simplified language.

The simplest way to use the guide is to foster student questioning using the model questions throughout the guide. If teachers routinely ask these questions of their children and regularly encourage children to ask these questions of their classmates, they will be pleased with the results. Thinking is question-driven. When children have no questions, they have no motivation to learn, to inquire, to discover. When teachers regularly focus on the questions in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children, students learn to formulate questions that improve their learning.

Teachers who use the guide may also be interested in obtaining its accompanying The Teacher's Manual to the Children's Guide to Critical Thinking. The manual provides suggestions for using The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children and for teaching basic critical thinking concepts. It also contains "Think for Yourself" activities for children to help them internalize critical thinking ideas. Another companion publication is Think About Fran and Sam: Which is Better at Their Thinking?




Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.