Paj, the author of our latest entry on chapter 5, said this about the photo: "This is a Christmas picture of my two nieces and nephew. The reason for my selection of the picture is because I thought their smiles were the cutest, and the nephew in the picture is the one I was talking about in my essay." Their smiles definitely are cute, so it appears you made a wise selection, Paj!
Happy reading!
Critical thinking is a big part of everyone’s lives. Galinsky said it best: “Critical thinking is ‘critical’ in life, in matters both large and small” (p. 203). If people did not have the ability to think critically, there would probably be many unsolved problems. Fortunately, most people are able to think critically.
Galinsky’s critical thinking chapter had many fascinating facts about how amazing a child’s mind is. An example of how children think differently at different ages that really amazed me was an experiment conducted by two students who attend the University of Virginia and the University of Queensland in Australia. Their experiment was a test to see if children between the ages of four and eight would believe that you can transform things from photos or toys, to things that are alive or real, or change their sizes. The outcome of this experiment had surprised them and it surprised me too! I could not believe that children would fall for this trick. But at the same time, I was not really surprised by it because in Piaget’s pre-operational stage, children do not have the ability to reverse actions in their mind.
Galinsky’s process for fostering problem solving has inspired me to use this for my own class when I am a teacher. When her daughter Lara was put in that kind of situation, it was nice to see Galinsky have this kind of problem solving method in her house. What is also good about having the method in her house is that she puts it to good use. From my understanding of it, it seems to me that she uses this method a lot with her children when it is needed. I think the way Galinsky uses this method would be helpful for me too! This would help me learn how to deal with my students in a professional manner and help my students learn how to solve their problems in a way that won’t stress them out too much. I think that it would be a useful tool that would help these young minds deal with more complicated things in life.
Galinsky made a point about children learning from others, especially those who are trustworthy and helpful to them, and I truly agree with it. At this stage, children are still in Erikson’s basic trust versus basic mistrust stage. It is easy to gain trust and easy for children to take that trust away from you, too. An example of this involves my nephew. My nephew usually sleeps at my house on the weekends. Every Saturday night, I take him home. But he never wants to go home. I usually trick him by taking him to the store to get his favorite ice cream or by taking him to the park. From there, I then take him home. He noticed the pattern and I lost his trust. Now that he is older, he does not fall for those tricks anymore.
Overall, I agree with Galinsky’s thoughts. She gave very insightful ideas I think will help me out with my future career.
Your example about your nephew is such a good one. It makes me think about the fact that, as children become more cognitively competent, it can make parenting and teaching them both easier and more difficult! We see the difficult part even beginning in infancy; for example, before children have object permanence (understanding that an object still exists even when out of sight), it's easy to distract them from something they want but should not have -- we just have to hide it, and it's quickly out of their mind! But, once they understand object permanence, which is a huge and important cognitive milestone, we have to be a lot more creative when redirecting their behavior!
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