By Mohamed Kamara
In most developing countries of Africa including Sierra Leone, critical thinking is widely considered as a taboo to the governance system, both incumbents and opposition groups accuse critical thinkers as unpatriotic and unnationalistic.
Here research shows that comprehensive critical thinking plays a unique role to forester development by expressing the need for transparency and accountability which are the beacon of good governance.
The idea of critical thinking has been develop for centuries, it is intellectually disciplined process of activity and skillfully, conceptualizing analyzing and or evaluating information gathered from a generated by observation experience, reflection, reasoning or communication as a way to beliefs and action in it exemplary form, critical thinking is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions. Clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, social evidence, good reason and fairness.
This is important to education in general but specifically to the education and practice of professionals and the political class, during the course of their work. They have to gather information, assess its values negotiate with stakeholders, decide on a course of action as a means of solving problems as well as implement and review the action taken. Information gathered and the perspective of stakeholders might offer contested solutions or routes forward. Furthermore, planned action have to be articulated and justified. In consequent, the ability to think critically being a critical thinker involves more than cognitive activities such as logical reasoning.
Thinking critically involves our recognizing assumption underlying our beliefs and behavior. It means we can give justifications for our ideas and actions. Most important, perhaps, it means we can try to judge the rationality of these justifications, we can do this by comparing them to a range of varying interpretations and persecution. We can think through projects and think the consequences of those actions of those actions that are based on justification. And we can test the accuracy and rationality of these justifications against some kind of objective analysis of the real as we understand it.