In the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings, Malaysia was one of five countries with the largest declines in test scores for reading, mathematics and science.
Malaysian students have also remained below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in all three subjects since 2018.
This is a concern as PISA measures knowledge as well as the ability of students to use knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. The PISA rankings indicate that Malaysian students struggle to apply critical thinking skills compared to their global peers.
Critical thinking is a misnomer, given that it is not a single skill, but a subset of skills – observation, analysis, inference and hypothesis – where structured analysis of information leads to a conclusion. These skills help students make sense of why things happen, and what their stance is on any given topic.
When students have higher critical thinking skills, they display more initiative and creativity, and tend to be more optimistic because they better understand what is happening in the world around them.
Critical thinking is essential to self-development as it influences our choices and behaviours. While approaches to this are changing, the school curriculum and teaching methods do not do enough to foster critical thinking early in a learner’s life.
Critical thinking starts with asking “why”. It is the causal reasoning that drives curiosity to frame problems and search for answers. Early childhood learners need greater support to nurture this sense of curiosity, and parents often play a big role by trying to answer these questions as they come up.
When the system stymies curiosity, children stop being curious, become passive, and just engage in rote learning and memorisation.
High social media consumption and information overload are also factors in the stunting of critical thinking. As we doomscroll through social media, we stop questioning what is real, what is true and how it matters.
Coupled with confirmation bias, where social media algorithms feed content tailored to a person’s likes and preferences, it is increasingly easy for young people to have polarised views on issues and situations, despite the fact that counterfactual perspectives can exist.
Reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) can also lead to diminished critical thinking skills due to students’ inability to question the outputs given.
AI can be an asset but only if it augments critical thinking. If a student is not analysing AI-generated responses, they may arrive at incorrect inferences, form partially true hypotheses or show lapses in judgement.
On a more positive note, critical thinking is like a muscle that can be strengthened through use. Just like the discovery of surface tension in 1880 by housewife Agnes Pockels, who asked why a film of soap stays on top of dishwater, critical thinking is about asking “why”.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin because he questioned why a blob of mould in a petri dish containing Staphylococcus seemed to repel the bacteria.
An individual’s ability to think in terms of cause and effect is part of strengthening critical thinking skills.
Students who have not come from a background of critical thinking may find that higher education helps hone these skills by structuring learning in better ways.
In university, students are taught to probe for alternate hypotheses. They learn to make inferences and rule out different alternatives.
Students wanting to develop stronger critical thinking skills need to ask counterfactual questions: Why and when should this happen? Why and when can the outcome be different?
Critical thinking is one of the most complex sets of “muscles” that everyone needs to exercise.
For those who may not have developed critical thinking skills in their early years of education, it is not too late.
As students in institutions of higher learning, they still have an opportunity to build up these skills. A student just needs to say, “This is my life. Do I want to make it better? If so, how?” That’s the start of critical thinking.
IMU Health group managing director Prof Gerry George studied biological sciences and management at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, before earning a PhD in business from Virginia Commonwealth University. Over his academic career, he has held leadership roles at Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, London Business School, and Imperial College Business School. In 2015, he became dean of the business school at Singapore Management University before joining the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
