Common Sense Isn't Very Common

As I delve deeper into my schooling, I find more and more that common sense isn't very common in this next generation. It's sad because I am seeing first hand the critical thinking skills of today's future. It's a very scary thing to say the least.

Many college students who I've talked to have lots of opinions, but once you start asking them

questions they cannot support their opinions in any way. The list of kids I've talked to are students at Ball State, Purdue North Central, IU, Purdue, Harvard, and more. When talking to current college students most of them, as I said, have their opinions. When you question their opinions at all, instead of using facts to support them, they go back to citing their opinion as evidence and proof. This can lead to a whole host of problems. However, the biggest thing here is that it highlights the lack of any developed critical thinking skills in the coming generation.

Some people might wonder why critical thinking skills are even important. This is why critical thinking skills are important. As kids turn into adults the decisions they have to make grow in importance. For instance, at the age of 18 adults begin to vote. When it comes to voting for someone to represent you in the United States government, it is important that that your decision is based off of facts, analyzed through critical thinking. You can't vote for someone based on opinions and emotions and expect a good outcome. A good example of this would be when it comes to welfare. The following is an extreme example to clearly iterate the point. Let's say someone had to choose between two candidates based solely on their stance on welfare. Candidate A wants to give unemployed people as much money as they need to live. Candidate B wants to give unemployed people a smaller amount. If someone were to make a decision based purely on emotion they would choose candidate A. Obviously anyone wants everybody to have whatever they need. This unfortunately is unrealistic. If you were to do a case by case study you'd find that most decisions and opinions made and held by emotion, are both unrealistic and stand with little to hold them up.

It is important that we as a society help strengthen the critical thinking skills of the next generation. However, the way to do that is not how it is being executed in college classes all over the U.S. That is by having professors telling kids how and what to think, and then telling them that they're thinking critically. But that's another blog post.

Seth

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