Critical Thinking and Divorce
Critical thinking refers to reflective thinking whereby a person views an event or incident objectively to develop arguments and then tries to reach some sound unbiased conclusions. The ability to think critically has occupied a pivotal position in last few decades because it allows a person to reach a conclusion that has not been colored by bias or pre-conceived notions about a certain person or issue. However critical thinking is something that most people are required to learn and not everyone is born with the skills to critically analyze a situation. Let us see how critical thinking has been defined and that will help us understand what exactly is meant by this term. We can then go on to apply critical thinking to the process of divorce.
John Dewey was one of the early thinkers to develop and present a sound definition of critical thinking. To him critical thinking was 'reflective thinking' which he defined as:
Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends" (Dewey, 1909, p.9)
Critical thinking is an active process, which allows individuals to actively participate in the analysis of information and evaluation of data. Instead of passive process where one reaches conclusions naturally without the aid or involvement of his or her own intellectual faculties, an active process is one where a person participates completely in the evaluation of information in order to reach impartial objective results.
Dewey's definition was widely accepted for a long time, in 1941, Edward Glaser came up with anther important definition of the term. He defined critical thinking as:
1) An attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experience (2) knowledge of...
Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form if knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends" (Glaser, 1941, p. 5)
It is clear that Glaser borrowed heavily from Dewey's definition but he added some original elements to come up with a more comprehensive definition of the term. According to Glaser, critical thinking is not simply a mental evaluation process but is actually an attitude that facilitates enquiry and reasoning. Chance (1996) simplified the earlier definitions of critical thinking and narrowed the process down to some important steps. According to him, critical thinking was:
the ability to analyze facts, generate and organize ideas, defend opinions, make comparisons, draw inferences, evaluate arguments and solve problems" (Chance, 1986, p. 6).
In recent times, however the definition of critical thinking has changed somewhat to include character traits and cognitive development. Harvey Siegel's work plays an important role in the development of more advanced definition of critical thinking. He defined critical thinking as that thinking which is "appropriately moved by reasons" (p. 32) However because of the use of vague ideas, Siegel's definitions is rather too broad in scope and is unlikely to be adopted for serious consideration. But his criticism helped us see the problems that existed with previous definitions.
John McPeck (1981) for example had defined critical thinking as "the skill and propensity to engage in an activity with reflective skepticism" (p. 8) This definition uses the term skepticism, which carries certain negative undertones and might not work well with educationists who are looking for a more positive definition.
Now that we have seen how various scholars and…
