Hello, I am Himanshi Parmar, student of MK Bhavnagar University. This blog i have written as a response to Thinking Activity, Which is a Part of my academic Work. Which we get after each unit. In this blog i am going to share my personal experience about two days workshop organized by our department (Department of English, MKBU).
On 13 and 14 August 2022.Saturday and Sunday, we had one interesting Workshop on Thinking Skills by professor Milan Pandya. Milan Pandya is Critical Thinking and Argumentation Specialist. Teacher, Trainer and Educator. He is also author of two books and have more than twelve year's teaching experience. He also presented numbers of journals and research papers in national and international conferences. He completed his Bachelor's degree and master's degree in English Literature, and currently working as a Vice President of Advancement at Critical Thinking Solutions company in Ontario, Canada. He also completed his M.Phil in English Language Teaching (ELT).
In two days workshop, we learned so many things, it was a most intellectual class. here this blog is outcome of our learning.
In this session he taught about Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking.creative thinking is something that lead us to the ideas that are not chewed.everyone can not be Creative thinker, it depends on each one's ability to think but one can develop creative insight by practising daily. But there won't have surety of being great creative thinker.
The same way for critical thinking, we require every day practise, or mind, thought exercise. In the reference of critical thinking Professor Milan Pandya sir gave example of Socrates, Socrates gave a quote that, "I know you won't believe me but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others". If we closely analyze the quote,then we find the higher manner of using language. Instead of being frustrated or angry on those who don't believe him, he praise them by saying that the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others. Critical insight is also there, if we see, we find that if they don't believe in you means you are telling something that has ordinary meaning and something that isn't easy to accept. The first quality of critical thinker is to question everything which they see, hear, watch and think. For example, in day to day life we are following many things, rituals, manners blindly and we never even think that why we are following it, what are the benefits and disadvantages of it. But critical thinking push us to think about even a smaller incident, thing of our life.
Logic,Rational and Scientific thinking is the core of critical thinking. Sir Also gave definition of critical thinking, 'Thinking about thinking, in order to improve thinking'. It has a deep meaning, probably this definition telling that we must think on our each and every small thought to improve our thinking. Critical insight must requires constant thinking.
He also talked about Fact and Opinion. Fact and opinion is totally different words, they aren't equal. Facts are something that don't going to be change, but Opinion rely on everyone's personal perspectives, it can change anytime. Mainly people think that emotions will change with time, but emotions will never change, it won't grow or become less, but we trained ourselves to control how to behave, to control emotions according to environment around.
"If something is true, What else has to be true in that" .
He also gave several examples related to creative thinking. Here is one example.
In this picture, it has bicycle and stitching machine merged.when sir asked to students that what deep meaning you see in this. Students gave various examples like it's a symbol modernity, it is related to industrialism, it is showing male dominated society etc. And when it asked that is it creative creation or not! Probably everyone replied in yes, but sir told actually it can be not consider as a creative creation. He gave several arguments that, to be creative two things are needed,
1) Never use old ideas that are already used.
2) creativity must have logic, meaning and value.
This picture don't have meaning or logic. As we can not imagine bicycle and stitching machine together. It is not possible to work with stitching machine along with riding bicycle.
He also introduced several thinking exercises to know we are creative or not. First he show one picture, here it is.
Here, we have various objects. Milan Sir told us to Find categories. Some are here,
Books name - Home And The World, GunIsland, Final solution.
Things made with Wood :- Paintbrush, Musical instrument,saw, Axe.
Things that moves round :- Grinder, World, Clock.
Things that move up to down :- Rocket, Plane.
Shapeless turns into shape :- Robot, Glass, Gift, Flag.
Opposite of it :- Candle, sand castle.
Shakespeare's play :- Hamlet, Macbeth.
LGBTQ :- Genderless Robot, Colour plate.
Metaphor in literature :- Axe, wine glass, Scull, Flag, safe.
Comment other categories that you find.
He also introduced some other activities to explain that seeing things in a way that others can not able to see is what called creativity. He show several pictures like brush, and Spectacles and told students to find all possible uses of that objects. Which will help students to develop creative thinking. Creativity related to four 'P'.
1) Person
2) Press
3) Process
4) Product
We faced several thought experiments like deduce confusing situations. By the example of train accident. Sir also gave types of Thinking. That are,
1) Abstract Thinking
2) Conceptual Thinking
3) Ability to Isolate.
The entire session was too fruitful with lively class environment and various activities. Students - teacher interaction. It was an informative as well amazing workshop.
