Judgment

Society depends upon good judgement. We need to judge whether something is true, whether it would work, whether it fits our values and objectives, and so on. Critical thinking is the key method we have for exercising this judgement. The word “critical” comes from the Greek word for judge which is kritikos. It would be very difficult for society to work if we did not use critical thinking. But judgment is not enough. There is the need for generative, productive, constructive and creative side of thinking. How do things happen ? How do things get done ? Selection and judgment is fine – but there has to be something to judge. The traditions of thinking have been dominated by critical thinking because the doers are out there producing and the only people directly interested in thinking have been the critics. That is why thinking has been dangerously dominated by the notion that critical thinking is enough. That is a big danger in schools today.

The gist of the passage is “Thinking is more than just critical thinking, which is judgement” . The other aspects of thinking including generative, productive, constructive parts are not considered which can create imbalance. For example mouse is important part of computer but just mouse alone is not enough, one also needs keyboard, cpu, monitor etc to fully make use of computer. Therefore associating thinking with just critical thinking which means judging is a dangerous thing because in today's society thinking has become synonymous with critical thinking.