Becoming Critical Thinkers Like Socrates and Plato

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When I give away the activity sheets to my grade 2 pupils this morning, I was almost tempted to give them the step by step instructions on how to answer their papers. I just didn't want them to fail for not following instructions. But then I thought to myself, they also need to learn to figure things out by themselves. Not everything in life goes with an instruction manual. If I want my student to be successful in life, I should not spoon-fed them with knowledge but train them to become skilled thinkers.
As an educator for more than 20 years now and have taught all ages in all levels including my own children, one of the achievements I really value is seeing my learners become critical thinkers. When I sent my homeschooled son to the university, I was confident that he would excel despite not being familiar with life in a big school. As I expected, he is doing great indeed. 

One of the major discussions we have in my MA in Education classes at present is on how to teach our students to become critical thinkers or skilled thinkers. There go the terms higher-order of thinking and Socratic questioning or the art of asking big questions. They sound like highly technical terms but really, we parents are already applying some them to our children. When we are not ignoring the unending "why-questions" of our toddlers, we are actually encouraging them to use higher-order of thinking. "What is this for?" is a bigger question than "What is this?" When preparing a test for my students and homeschoolers, I usually avoid formulating questions answerable by yes or no or plain true or false. "They have to be moved to a higher-order of thinking." says one of my professors. And alas, it's not a hard task because there are strategies to do that.

If you are a teacher or a homeschool mom, you don't really need to take MA in Education as I did to learn more  about critical thinking strategies. Critical thinking is not a new thing. It's even older than Socrates and Plato. There are excellent online resources available which one I just hopped into and is happily hooked in.