Cultivating Critical Thinking in the Classroom

If students were unarmed in 1948, they are nearly undressed today. In this information age, students have information coming at them from everywhere—social media, TV, ads, public signage, bumper stickers, church, school, and right in their pockets via the internet on smartphones, watches, and tablets. With all this knowledge, they are more susceptible than ever to propaganda, misinformation, and indoctrination from the world than ever before. They need teachers to help them understand that knowledge is not the same as learning.

Teachers “arm” their students by teaching them how to think critically from a truly biblical worldview. Here are some ways to do this:

1. Give them a solid foundation.

Students don’t know how to think until they know what to think about. They can’t critically examine the claims of evolution if they haven’t been taught the truth of creation, corruption, and the global catastrophic flood in Genesis. They can’t analyze classic literature if they haven’t been taught the history, philosophies, and biographies of the authors and time periods.

2. Ask open-ended questions.

Students in middle and high school need to encounter challenging, open-ended questions, such as:

• What does it mean to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength?
• How does Charlotte Brontë use the themes of light and darkness in Jane Eyre?
• How did the Enlightenment influence the American Revolutionary War?

Students can engage these questions as homework assignments, essays, or class discussions as the teacher moderates and asks further questions to guide them.

3. Encourage students to ask questions.

The older students become, the less they like to raise their hands and ask questions. Consider an assignment that requires them to ask three questions about the topic and submit them for a grade or extra credit.

4. Inspire creativity.

Creativity is problem-solving and curiosity by other names. Students must ask themselves questions to successfully accomplish a task, project, or craft.

• What colors do I mix to make the color of this brick?
• What pitch or harmony do I need for my musical composition to sound suspenseful?
• How can I end this short story without being trite?
• What material would make this sculpture look more realistic and be more durable?
• What would happen if I dropped an apple and a rubber ball each into water versus gravel?

5. Promote independent decision-making.

Students should be tasked with making independent decisions, such as:

• Which topic they choose for an essay
• Which sport they participate in this year
• Which electives or after-school program they want to opt into

Giving students the opportunity to make decisions for themselves allows them to find what they enjoy so they can fail at it. Once they’ve failed, they can figure out how to succeed. They gain a positive sense of cause-and-effect and are forced, in a healthy setting, to take ownership of their decisions and accept the consequences—good or bad.

6. Prompt them to challenge the premise.

Students are being indoctrinated at every turn. If teachers aren’t careful, they might make students feel indoctrinated by school and church too. Help them learn to be true apologists by first giving them knowledge and truth and then helping them wrestle with it.

• How do I know God’s Word is true?
• Is presuppositional thinking an act of faith?
• Could God have used evolution to create the world?
• Is evolution a valid and scientific theory?

As students learn how to assess information and put it in context, they strengthen their faith, understanding, discernment, and wisdom to critically face the world ahead. Teachers shouldn’t fear the hard, open-ended questions when their feet are firmly planted on God’s Word. It’s their job to help guide students, through skillful questions, to the authority of God’s Word.