Part 1: Thoughts after reading "Learning to Ask Questions"
On Teacher's Day, in order to find books for teachers, I accidentally saw a book titled "Learning to Ask Questions". The famous educator Tao Xingzhi once said, "The starting point of thousands of inventions is a question." I wonder in what aspects will the author make a fuss about the topic of "questioning"? Read this book carefully. The author uses very popular language, lively style, explanations in simple terms, and provides very vivid examples to guide us how to ask the right questions and focus on "What is a topic and what is a conclusion?" Twelve key points such as "What is the reason" and "Which words and sentences are ambiguous" guide us step by step in the training of critical thinking.
As I read, I thought that the developed media in today’s society have made people surrounded by massive amounts of information every day, making it impossible to distinguish the truth from the false. People rely more and more on experts, lawyers, journalists, and commentators to an extent beyond imagination. What we often talk about are "says on TV", "says in newspapers" and "says on the Internet", but there is no "I think". We passively and uncritically accept the deluge of information that comes our way every day. This is a terrible trend. Over time, we don’t know how to judge, and we can’t even think of criticizing.
Our children, when they are young, like to ask questions about this and that. Why do they ask fewer questions as they get older? In each of our training activities, after the experts’ wonderful speeches, there is always an interactive session to give everyone the opportunity to ask questions. But why is it always at this moment that everyone lowers their heads? I think that as teachers, we must not only inspire but also protect children’s natural tendency to ask questions; as educators, we must first learn to ask questions so that we can better inspire and protect children’s questions.
After reading this book, I think that although I cannot immediately learn to make the smartest judgment, I can at least learn not to make the stupidest judgment. Quoting a sentence from the book "Seek better conclusions, find better opinions, make better decisions" and share it with everyone!
Chapter 2: Thoughts after reading "Learning to Ask Questions"
From elementary school to graduate school, I have always played the role of a student, and I am used to looking at problems from a student's perspective. Except when I ask questions to the teacher when I encounter difficulties in my homework, I rarely ask valuable questions about a certain article or person on a certain topic during the rest of the time. Moreover, more than ten years of student life have made us accustomed to accepting the opinions of books or authorities, and rarely judge a certain point of view objectively and independently.
As Neil Brown of the United States said in his book "Learning to Ask Questions", in order to cope with exams, we have always used sponge thinking to absorb the knowledge in books and put all the information into practice. Put all the knowledge points into your head at once. For reading textbooks, sponge thinking works really well. However, as we grow older and experience more, we can no longer purely use sponge thinking to read and learn all kinds of information we come into contact with in life, like reading textbooks. The 21st century is an era of information explosion. We receive huge amounts of information through various media every day. Especially with the rapid development of the Internet, all kinds of information are overwhelming. In this case, we must learn to use gold-digging thinking to analyze, and transform it into our own opinions through our own thinking processing, thereby improving our knowledge reserves.
Gold-digging thinking is actually a kind of critical thinking and an interactive way of reading. To adopt critical thinking, you need to know how to question why the author makes various claims. You need to interact with the materials you read at all times, critically evaluate the materials you read, and draw your own conclusions based on objective evaluations. conclusion. Critical thinking is an awareness of a set of interrelated and interlocking key issues; the ability to ask and answer key questions appropriately; and the desire to proactively use key questions. How to stimulate our critical thinking? This requires learning to ask questions.
To learn to ask questions, you must first grasp the author's topic and conclusion, and understand the overall framework of the article, thereby clearing obstacles for subsequent reading. Then, understand the author’s reasoning, that is, what the argument is. Next, think about whether the expressions in the article are objective and rational, what words have unclear meanings, and whether there are ambiguities. After that, figure out the author's value assumptions and descriptive assumptions, analyze whether there are fallacies in the reasoning in the article, and how effective the evidence is, whether there are alternative reasons, whether the data is deceptive, whether any important information has been omitted, and based on the existing What reasonable conclusions can be drawn from the information. Read according to the above ideas, ask your own questions and think about them one by one. Only in this way can you gradually train to strengthen your critical thinking and gain greater benefits from reading.
Harvard University's famous saying: "The real purpose of education is to make people constantly ask questions and think about problems." How to ask valuable questions, "Learn to Ask" will give you a satisfactory answer.
Part 3: Thoughts after reading "Learning to Ask Questions"
When I first read "Learning to Ask Questions", I realized that I might have discovered the answer to the question that has been bothering me. What they lack is critical thinking. And this should mainly be blamed on our traditional education.
From ancient times to the present, our education has always imprisoned people’s thoughts. From the three cardinal principles and five constant principles in ancient times to the service and obedience in modern society, everything is penetrated bit by bit through school education. "The king is the guide for his subjects, the father is the guide for his sons, and the husband is the guide for his wife." In the long feudal society, this moral concept has always bound people's thoughts, so much so that it has penetrated into the genes of the Chinese people. Looking at today's society, Leading cadres compete for positions, and the work plans and summaries of all walks of life must contain the following content: "I will obey the leadership and obey the arrangements..."; from the ancient imperial examination system to the current high school entrance examination, from studying the tactics of the sea of ??questions in the cold window, Our students have been practicing and memorizing mechanically. They have never had time to question, or even know how to question.
Questioning is the prototype and foundation of critical thinking, and critical thinking is an advanced way of thinking of questioning. Critical thinking is the literal translation of English CriticalThinking. CriticalThinking in English refers to the kind of daily thinking that can grasp the main points, is good at questioning and analyzing, is based on strict inference, is full of wit and aura, and is clear and agile. In the 1940s, critical thinking was used to mark a theme in American education reform; in the 1970s, critical thinking became the focus of the American education reform movement; in the 1980s, it became the core of education reform. Robert Ennis, the pioneer of the critical thinking movement in the United States, carefully analyzed the concept of "critical thinking" in 1962. His recent statement is that critical thinking is "reasonable introspection to decide what to believe or what to do." "Thinking"
Criticism is not the exclusive preserve of scientists, our daily lives also require critical thinking. Critical choice and critical acceptance, otherwise, you will be at a loss in this society. The developed media in today's society make people surrounded by massive information every day, making it impossible to distinguish between truth and falsehood. People rely more and more on experts, lawyers, journalists, and commentators to an extent beyond imagination. What we often talk about are "says on TV", "says in newspapers" and "says on the Internet", but there is no "I think". We passively and uncritically accept the deluge of information that comes our way every day. This is a terrible trend. Over time, we don’t know how to judge, and we can’t even think of criticizing.
How to have this skill? The training of this kind of thinking is a long-term process. Currently, only some universities offer this course. As a basic science teacher in middle schools, we should also start cultivating students' critical thinking. Of course, we must first learn how to do it ourselves. Be critical.
Read this book carefully. The author uses very popular language, lively style, explains in simple terms, and provides very vivid examples to guide us how to ask the right questions and focus on "what is "Thesis, what is the conclusion?" "What is the reason?" "Which words and sentences are ambiguous?" "What is a conflict of values, what is a value assumption?" "What is a descriptive assumption?" "Are there fallacies in the reasoning?" "What is the credibility of these evidences?" "How old is it?" "Have you discovered the causes of interference?" "Are statistics deceptive?" "What important information has been missed?" "What conclusions may be reasonable" and other eleven key points, guiding us step by step in critical thinking. training.
While reading, I thought that if we learn critical thinking, both teachers and students will benefit a lot. If students learn critical thinking, they can analyze the language, thoughts and behaviors of parents, teachers, experts, and leaders more scientifically and rationally, avoid being deceived, and even solve the problem of blind obedience, so that citizens can gradually move toward integrity, democracy, and society. healthy development. More importantly, by providing such training to students, schools will enable students to master a better learning method. When they have questions about a certain event in the future, they will know how to find reasons, collect evidence, and how to use the Internet or Consult the information to obtain the required knowledge, how to verify one hypothesis after another through research and experiments, and no longer blindly and mechanically learn and be burdened by knowledge.
After reading this book, I wrote this on the title page: "This is a book that will affect your way of thinking. It may not affect your whole life, but it will be enough to affect the rest of your life."
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