Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
I wanted to start off by sharing a review from one of the members of my Crazy Thinkers Membership.. This is from Regina and she says this: "Thanks for your endeavor to help us all think more critically. I not only use the Crazy Thinkers resource for our homeschool students, but it has proven invaluable for my own work situation. Leading in a time of polarization has been brutal and exhausting. Thanks to your podcast, I have been able to approach my role with much clearer thinking and defined terminology, while also parsing out emotionalism versus values from my own convictions. I have been able to call out generalizations and fallacies from others, while striving to lead conversations seasoned with grace. I've also learned new fallacies and have begun recognizing my own. My children are pretty good at helping me with that last part, now that they're listening to your podcast. Thank you again for this critical skill in this critical time. May God continue to bless your work, and many others through it." Whoo, y’all, can I just tell you that it made my day to hear how she’s using the materials from Crazy Thinkers and how it’s helping her! I’m going to tell you a little bit more about Crazy Thinkers in just a minute, because the doors are open right now! If you want to learn more, go check out the details at www.filteritthroughabraincell.com/crazy.
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I’ve given you a bunch of new fallacies in the last few weeks so I feel like it’s a good time to pause and talk about HOW to integrate what you’re learning into your or your kids’ minds, into your brains. Here’s the thing: Critical Thinking is a skill, and just like any skill, it has to be practiced. Listening to this podcast is awesome and I KNOW it’s already helping you start to think better, recognize bad thinking and communicate better. It's like learning a new sport, let’s say basketball. Learning basketball is the same as learning really anything. First, you have to learn the grammar, or the language of basketball. This is a ball. This is a hoop. This is called dribbling. This is called shooting. This is how you score and these are the rules. So, you have to learn the words of the game first. Then, you have to learn how those things relate to each other. You can go to YouTube and find all kinds of videos on how to play basketball and watch people showing you all the different skills necessary to play basketball well, which would be cool! You would definitely be able to appreciate the game of basketball more when you watch it, but, have you gotten any better at basketball? No. What does it take to get better at basketball? Practice! You have to get the ball in your hands and practice dribbling, shooting, passing, etc. And how often do you have to practice to get better? I’ll say this…you need to be practicing consistently if you’re going to have any hope of developing any kind of decent basketball skills.
Same with critical thinking…learning the WHAT is absolutely the first step, which is why I started the podcast. You have to learn the grammar, the language of good thinking before you can ever practice it. But, if you want to get good, you have to learn the HOW…you have to practice. So, let me give you a few simple ways to practice what you’re learning in the podcast.
1. I almost hate to say it, because this is the most boring thing ever and what most people don’t enjoy doing, but the number one way to practice is by reviewing. Our brains are incredibly efficient at helping us figure out what’s important and unimportant and one of the ways our brain does that is by paying attention to how often we are paying attention to a thing. If we only pay attention to something once, that’s cool, but our brain eventually files it away under the “not so important” file and we’ll forget it! But, if we review that thing on a regular or even semi-regular basis, our brain pays attention to it and it’ll file it under the “important to remember” file and we’ll be much more apt to remember that thing. Now, obviously, this is a super simple explanation of how our brain remembers things, but you get the point. The more we review, the more we’ll remember. And that’s why so often I start off episodes by reviewing fallacies we’ve covered earlier in the season!
2. Make it Applicable to Real Life. When we can see that something applies to our life, we tend to pay more attention to it because we see why it matters! It’s like it becomes valuable and important to us when we can see that it’s applicable to us. I don’t know about your kids, but my daughter doesn’t particularly enjoy learning math. She’s in Algebra right now and often complains that she’ll never use it in daily life. I remember thinking that as a kid, too! However, now, as an adult, I can see all the little ways I do use algebraic principles, if not the actual formulas, in my daily life. I don’t have a job that’s math-centric, but I do run a business, a home, file our taxes, have to figure distance and quantity, etc. One of the things I’ve tried to explain to my daughter is that learning Algebra is training her brain to think in a certain way and that will always benefit her in life. She’s not totally convinced yet, but I do try to make it practical & applicable, and I know one day she’ll get it.
Ok, I’ll stop there with the first 2 ways to practice Critical thinking and give you numbers 3 & 4 tomorrow because this episode is going to get long otherwise.
These 4 ways to practice critical thinking are the core of Crazy Thinkers, which is the membership I’ve created to help you practice the things you’re learning here in this podcast. It’s a simple way to review the fallacies using real-life ads, headlines, articles, memes, etc… where you can have fun practicing good thinking in a super simple format that’s totally done for you.
Crazy Thinkers is a monthly subscription and every month, you’ll get 2 thing:
First, you’ll get a downloadable pdf that you can use digitally or print off. In every pdf, I’m giving you cartoons, memes, real-life headlines or links to articles where you can practice identifying the fallacy being committed. But not only that, I also give you questions to ask yourself or to ask your teen to go through the process of thinking well about what you’re seeing so that you can come to the correct conclusion. These questions also help you go deeper and have a really cool conversation about what you’re seeing.
The second thing you’ll get each month is access to a new series I’m starting called “How To Think About…” Each month, I’m going to be interviewing people who are excellent thinkers about a particular topic and they will teach us HOW they go about thinking about their particular topic to come to truth. You guys, this series is going to be so cool! In fact, just this week, I’ll be interviewing my friend, David, who is an Apologist and he’ll be teaching us how to think about arguments against your faith. And I’ve already got a stack of 10 memes that I’m going to have him go through and we’re going to hear him think out loud about how he thinks about what’s wrong with the memes and how he arrives at truth. It’s going to be so cool and super applicable. Anyways, every month will be a different topic. And yes, those will be recorded if you can’t attend life.
Also, as part of Crazy Thinkers, you’ll get access to a course I’m creating on the basics of thinking well. These will be simple videos you can watch at your own pace that will teach you how to ask the RIGHT questions to determine what’s wrong with what you’re seeing and help you arrive at truth.
The doors are open right now to Crazy Thinkers, so if you want a simple way to practice the skills of good thinking, you can get all the details & register at www.filteritthroughabraincell.com/crazy.
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
