Common Sense is not so common anymore....

         Common sense is not so common anymore. Without common sense we lack reasoning skills which can change the way we see the world. Strong Critical Thinking and reasoning skills build a stronger America. As most have seen within the last few years the United States is losing its critical thinkers. People don’t look into what they are hearing, they take what is being said by anyone as raw fact; this eliminates all reasoning skills. With peoples reasoning on the constant decrease we need to find a new way to increase these skills and I propose teaching these skills in school. Requiring these skills are taught in schools will ensure that each student learns the importance of critical thinking. Introducing reasoning skills to these people while they are still young will make their reasoning skills come fluidly and without thought. It becomes habit. 

Imagine a world with no reasoning skills, we would all be a group of robots doing whatever someone told us to do because we would not have half a mind to say that what they are asking of us is not in any way reasonable. A great example of this would be my 2 year old little sister. Like any other 2 year old, she does just about anything my parents ask of her, without a blink of an eye. The other day my Dad was playing with her and told her to smell his foot, just to see if she would do it, and of course she did it. At her age she is not expected to have very good reasoning skills but I have seen teenagers, old enough to know what a silly request is, smell my Dad’s foot. Thats just not right, at that age their reasoning skills should be more sharp and reasonable (no pun intended) than to smell another persons foot. Steven Kalas explores this issue in his article Human Matters, he explains “There is nothing more important an education can provide a child than to foster a hunger to think critically and the tools to know how”. I couldn’t have said it better.

  Schools can make more critical thinkers but traditionally parents and role models have been responsible for children’s reasoning skills. Before the last few years this has been a great way to teach these skills. Parents influence their children so much that, with good reasoning skills, they could create the best critical thinkers. My parents are those kind of parents, so much logic to share, who have raised me around using logic. I have grown to question everything thanks to those two lovely people. My parents have had a huge influence on my reasoning skills. This has worked remarkably in the past and there is a possibility of it continuing. 

Critical thinking is incredibly important to keep us on our tows doing our research. Teaching reasoning skills in schools will ensure the wisdom of our students, they will touch the stars. Reasoning skills are golden, they make me different from you and you different from the next guy. Through reasoning we learn things that we would have never been introduced to before.  

We use to learn critical thinking through the important people in our life; as the years go bye less and less people learn these skills from their loved ones or role models. Teaching critical thinking in schools will ensure that each student gets the opportunity to know how to speculate and interpret everything they encounter accurately. Each student deserves to understand how to do this, so lets give this gift to them by introducing critical thinking skills in schools everywhere.