Exercise #4

Barriers to Critical Thinking

1.     Misunderstanding what is meant by criticism.

Criticism is when you comment on something or somebody in a bad way or in a negative way, saying the bad stuff and the problem and forget about the good side or the side that the critic see, and some people misunderstanding the mean of the criticism and take it in the negative way. 

For example: If I tell my friend to buy a new laptop because his lap is old and can’t handle the college works and could break down in the middle of the exam he will say that I’m not a windows fan and I’m an apple boy, which makes no sense because I didn’t say anything about the brand and he misunderstand what is my point.

2.     Lack of methods and strategies.

Lack of methods is when you don’t know much about something and how to do it and you don’t have the steps of doing it you will end up failing in doing it. 

For example: if you didn’t know the steps of solving a mathematics equation you won’t be able to solve it.

3.    Lack of practice.

Lack of practice is when you have knowledge about doing something and maybe you have done it long time ago but in the current time you can’t do it as good as in the past because you need to practice on doing it. 

For example: If I got an equation from Calculus I, I won’t be able to solve it even though I studied this course last semester, I need to practice again. 

4.     Reluctance to criticize those with more expertise.

This is a problem happen when a less experience guy wants to say his opinion but the other guy is higher level than him so he’s scared or respect his level and keep his opinion for him self. 

For example: The head of engineers putted a plan for building a machine, and one of the engineers is knew that this plan won’t work but he didn’t say anything about it because the head of the engineers is more experience and he’s in a higher level than him.

5.     Affective reasons.

Affective reasons is when your emotional distract you from your argument, it could add a lot of power to your reasons but most of the time you will lose control and start to be angry. 

For example: a girl will be angry if someone said that her favorite singer doesn’t have the qualifies to be a good singer.

6.     Mistaking information for understanding.

Learning is a way to develop your skills in finding the solutions for the problem and to work hard with your brain to find the answers for your self, and some of the students don’t want to work their brains, the want the solutions and the answers ready for them with no effort from their side. 

For example: In the Math class some of the students want the teacher to solve the equation on the bored instead of solving it by their own which is better because everyone will know where is his weakness and where he’s mistaken.

7.     Insufficient focus and attention to detail.

Critical thinking needs to pay attention to every details and some of the weak critical thinkers give a judgment based on what he generally sees which is totally wrong because in critical thinking you will need to search deeper. 

For example: there’s a crime and one of the suspects is covered with the victim blood and they said that he’s the murderer which could be and couldn’t because they didn’t search and focused more in the case because this is not a really good evidence