TGIF – Thinking Skills, Oops

As the week winds down, we wind down with some tidbits for your information, education, health, and enjoyment.

Quotes of the Week: “Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.”  Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“I am a peripheral visionary. I can see the future, but only way off to the side.”  Steven Wright

Humor Break: Critical thinking skills as applied by famous people in history.  Today’s question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” 

Said Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Said Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.

Said Hamlet: That is not the question.

Stat of the Week: College graduation is upon us, all that new talent waiting to be hired: 45% of students made no significant improvement in critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills during their first two years of college, and 36% showed no improvement after four years of schooling … so it says in the just published Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.

Action Tip: “If you are standing still, you are falling behind.”  Invest 5% of your time in your future.  School didn’t end at age 21.

Volunteering: Almost all elementary schools have programs for volunteer readers.  Get involved.  And when reading to a child, always ask the child to explain what he or she just heard or read.  Follow-up with a “Why?”.  That is how to start critical thinking skills at a very early age.  (PS: Try hard to be very supportive of the child’s answer!)
[tags]critical thinking, reasoning, writing skills, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.