Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
"Your monthly content has been a family favorite! I joined because my oldest daughter and I REALLY enjoyed reading The Fallacy Detective, and my oldest son has now started to read it because he's enjoying the "puzzle" of your memes. The four of us talk about your memes together. I start with your questions and it inevitably leads to different questions and discussion. I love that we are talking about heavy matters in a very light and fun way. We are all building our thinking skills together and I'm thankful to have your content to help me have these discussions with my kids. Thank you for the fun! You've helped this mama immensely." Jessie K.
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Ok, let’s wrap up from yesterday’s episode on 4 Simple Ways to Practice Critical Thinking.
Yesterday I gave you numbers 1 & 4. Number one was Review. The more we review something, the more likely we are to remember it. And is reviewing fun? Usually not, but it’s necessary, so finding a fun, simple way to review the fallacies is important to being able to remember them. Number 2 was Make it Applicable to Real Life. When we can see how something will apply to our life and then when we actually use it and see the benefit from it, it’s so much easier to learn it! So when it comes to critical thinking, we have to make it applicable…we have to see how it will actually benefit us to know it and learn it. Let me give you numbers 3 & 4.
3. Make it fun - make it a game. I have read so much on early childhood and learning and almost everything I read repeats the same thing: children learn best when they’re playing. And I would say that fun makes it easier for all of us to learn new things! I’m sure there’s a scientific, brain-related explanation to this, but we can all probably think back to personal experience where you had fun learning something and it made it easy to learn it. Same thing with critical thinking. So many people, when they hear ‘critical thinking’ or ‘logic’, tend to think of old guys with beards and elbow patches on their jackets, or they’ll think of the ancient Greeks wearing togas sitting around contemplating lofty ideas. And maybe those things are true, but what if we could change that image? What if we could make critical thinking cool? What if we could make critical thinking fun? What if we could make it a game? It instantly gets easier and makes us want to play the game! So, how can you make critical thinking fun? That will go a long way to helping it stick.
4. Keep it Simple. Seriously, there are some really great curricula out there to learn logic & critical thinking, we’ve done several of them in our own homeschool, and they’re great! But, can I tell you this..some of them were heavy…and hard. It didn’t feel like learning it was fun. Critical thinking is a topic that feels intimidating to people because they think it’s complicated and hard. But I feel like it can be so much easier to learn if it’s kept fun and simple.
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, but they close tomorrow, so if you want a fun, simple, applicable way to practice the skills of good thinking, you can get all the details & register at www.filteritthroughabraincell.com/crazy.
Alright, that’s it for today.
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?”
