When hearing of critical thinking, think of critiquing thinking, tearing ideas apart and examining them.

Critical thinking is very delicate, as it relies on a solid foundation of knowledge.

And it is not just about acquisition, of functional and authentic knowledge.

It is about you dumping what is false, but you have been taught, or learned to believe to be true.

To tear things apart and examine them, you need a workbench, with tools for thinking.

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Let me show you some falsehoods that you are clinging to, your High School or College GPA being one of the most important things.

It isn’t, in fact, adults that mention it, are seen as infantile, eventually you internalize that GPA is tweaked by teachers and stained by cramming.

It is not a very valid or authentic measure of anything, it is a make believe thing.

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There are people who work hard and take great care of their 4.0, but, they are not focused on comprehension, just passing tests.

Comprehension, which is a foundation of real and authentic knowledge, would interfere with in-authentic standardized education.

You would fail most tests, as you would be too busy learning for real, there would be no time for pretending to learn the way textbooks expect you to.

Text books want you to follow their web of knowledge, in great part, because of matching tests and the state GPA requirements.

Instead of learning for real, you are given a hint of education, that will appear as real due to the equally ineffective matching tests.

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Following webs of knowledge, to connect things together, requires authentic curiosity, that must come from within you.

It is something deeply personal, it is unique to you, a lot of people have their predispositions pushed out of the way.

In favor of standardized education, the only people that thrive here, are teachers, and those whose curiosities largely matched what the school was teaching.

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A person who has been growing up with some predispositions for being an artist, will do great in the art class.

A person with parents that present numbers, forces and formulas, as emergent tools, machines, and teach their child to see into mathematics.

Will raise a child who will excel at mathematics, because they won’t just have surface knowledge but visions of what lies beneath.

These cases are held up as examples, of people who learn hard and succeed, and in a pretty serious way they are the opposite, they didn’t let school ruin them.

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Now, I don’t want to give you the idea that for example, programming class, can actually teach you to be a programmer.

In fact it is overwhelmingly more likely to push you away from it, because of what a naive disaster it is, and how it teachers out of sequence.

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A moment ago you believed in your GPA, now you have been reminded that knowledge demands comprehension.

Memorization, or as the case is temporary memorization, is just theater, and you forget everything after graduation.

When you get at your intellectual inheritance, valuing authenticity, and standing in relentless pursuits of excellence.

Becomes an active component in your decision making, and with all the wisdom you continue inheriting from countless wise books.

You will now tear and examine all the ideas in-front of you, to check what else they may hide, and what impact that has on you.

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Moreover, critical thinking, is what scientists do, the scientific method is all about tearing ideas apart.

The key component of a good Doctor or Scientist, however, is not just examination, bu the ability change beliefs, so that they match truth.

Interesting question: can you become a scientist by just being a really good critical thinker? Or do you actually need a diploma, and a good GPA.

I’d love to pose this as a question that you should answer on your own, but I am happy to announce, that yes, you can.

You do not need a diploma to become a scientist that does science, the first students of natural philosophy were some of the greatest scientists.

They didn’t care for diplomas, they cared for facts, truth, clarity, and above all evidence.

Critical thinking is an on-ramp towards science, and a diploma does not mean that much certainly not at first..

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There are no easy ways of explain everything precisely, for the exact same reason that standardized education is so ineffective.

To comprehend something you must move, at your own pace, and in the sequence that matches your knowledge and curiosity.

And there is no perfectly reliable map, that is what teachers or AI should be doing just steering you in the right direction.

Where you can begin examining whatever calls to you, this could be something that no teacher would see as related.

But all the things that your curiosity called you to, are intricately connected within you.

All those curiosites combine to help you create qunique inventions, that few other people in the world would think up.

And again, standardized education removes your curiosities, and tells you what you need to learn, and that just makes you a depressed worker.

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You will be pleasantly surprised, I hope, at just how you are supposed to get at your intellectual inheritance.

Which I would define as the thing that enables you to resume, where the great beings before you, left off.

First of all you will need narrated books, especially when you are very young, but also as you are working on your vocabulary, and picture of the world.

And then, you will need to make room, for all that spoken knowledge carefully read to you by narrators.

And that means, adventure, and before your parents check, there are no substitutes.

You and your parents, and later alone, will have to at the very least, section hike all the beautiful parts of…

The Appalachian, Pacific Crest and Continental Dive Trails, or their equivalents in your part of the world.

You are nature, not a machine or a worker, it should come as no surprise that you need nature for peace and comprehension.

And if I may, begin with the adventure books first, because like you, no adventurer has ever set off, merely for adventures sake.

There is great wisdom about each and every story, and even in their tragedy or loss, you will find lessons of safety and protection.

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Finally, everything is connected, you don’t learn the moment you sit at your desk, you are always learning.

Everything you do has impact on everything else, and most of your curiosities emerge when you are little.

Do not sell your self short, you become a scientist the day you embrace the scientific method as dear.

And begin your quest for growing all the way up towards becoming a great being, the day you accept your intellectual inheritance.

And spend your days listening to all the clear thinking intellectuals, who made our world better and worth advancing still.

Don't worry at what the adults have to say about what science is or it is not, learn how to think about science from the greatest scientists and thinkers that wrote.

Begin at your local library, in the adventure section of narrated books.