Voices of Tomorrow: Developing Critical Thinking Through Debates and Storytelling in Schools:
Critical thinking: A MUST!!
Critical thinking is a dominant requirement in today’s world. But what’s critical thinking? Critical thinking is analyzing, questioning, evaluating and knowing every topic thoroughly. In simpler terms, it is feeding one’s curiosity through which their power of decision-making improves.
Why is critical thinking that important??
In recent years, education has become accessible to a larger sect of people. As the literacy rate increases, competition exponentially increases. In today’s digitalized world with extravagance and technical dominance, need for problem-solving is a must. Problem-solving skills are the result of critical thinking.
Role of schools in developing critical thinking:
School is the basement for learning. Every child’s aspiration gets a proper shape in their schools. The right teachers mould the children according to their capabilities. Children are the voice of tomorrow. They need to know and excel in the art of communication. Communication is the base of expressions. Even the best of ideas become crashed without a proper expression. Hence to communicate and share their thoughts, children need critical thinking skills. We all know well that – “Thoughts become words, words become action”. The thought processes with critical thinking give efficient and quality outcomes.
Critical thinking has become the base of employment in recent days. A talented person is not employed if, they lack decision-making and problem-solving skills. This ambitious world wishes to grow higher and higher. It is a race with many hurdles. The one who tackles the hurdles gets hired first. Hence, the schools need to train the children accordingly.
How can schools instill critical thinking, in juvenile brains??
Public speaking is a way of learning. It is a leadership quality in itself. Public speaking paves the way to critical thinking. When a few students talk together about a topic, various viewpoints surface.
To make students productive with each other is a prodigious task. This can be achieved in a conventional way – Debates. Debates give a topic its original value. Both the pros and cons of a topic are discussed. The issue is deeply analyzed both intellectually and emotionally giving an unprejudiced solution to it. When the schools initiate debates regularly, the children will become confident public speakers and analytical thinkers.
Next to public speaking, creativity matters for tackling the mountainous hurdles that come our way. The students have to be prepared on that ground. The best way to improvise creativity along with speaking is storytelling. Stories can change lives!! When students are encouraged to write their own stories, they will learn the art better. Writing a story requires voluminous reading. A fact when presented after thorough research in a story form has a larger impact and reach. Storytelling makes children confident, creative, hard-working and better readers.
Conclusion:
Critical thinking learnt at school, becomes the first asset of future for our future achievers and that’s what Cape of Good Hope is instilling in kids of today and tomorrow.