Critical Thinking: A Panacea for Personal and National Rebirth

By Ogiri John Ogiri.

I do not intend to provoke, by this piece , what philosophers would refer to as a conceptual crisis.Hence, I have decided to evade any academic attempt at a conceptual definition of the term "Critical Thinking" in order to focus on practical areas I think we should use it.

 ( You can consult Silvano Borruso's The Art of Thinking published by Paulines Africa in 1998 for more on Critical thinking)

Over the years, I have observed, of course, through personal interactions and pen contacts with some Africans particularly Nigerians, that Critical thinking is an area dreaded and avoided by many. Yes, critical thinking, the type that can dislodge and expunge from our minds, false religious beliefs and restore our minds to critical consciousness and bring about a fundamental change in what we believe, how we believe and the way we do things, is avoided by most Nigerians. Many believe that, there is nothing we can do, usually ending by saying "only God can help us". By implication, everything including national development should be left to God's miraculous interventions while we watch and pray. I do not agree with this perspective. I think this is a defeatist mindset.

 This has raised several questions in mind. Are we scared of discovering a solution outside religion? Are we scared of discovering ourselves and how much we can do if we dared to think critically?

The truth is that, nations fail when they avoid critical thinking. Ability to think critically; being able to interrogate and scrutinize long-held conservative belief systems no longer in sync with modern realities, challenge an existing but unproductive, retrogressive institutions and systems and daring to do things differently from what has been done before and how those things have been done, are some of the reasons behind Why the West, including the Asian countries of China, Japan, India, Malaysia,South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan etc  still rule for Now . The successes of their enterprises and the tremendous socio-political and economic progress they have so far recorded are not a result of any investment in seed-sowing, prayer and fasting, they are a result of critical thinking, provoking sincere investments in research, technology and credible electoral systems. What have we being learning from them?

Dear Africans, there is nothing wrong with us. Our colours do not define what we can do and how far we can go in life.  Fellow Nigerians, there is nothing wrong with us. In fact, we are a community of wonderful people blessed with latent and obvious abilities to make exploits and become successful despite our fractured socio-political background and unpalatable socio-economic development experiences. 

We are a nation of gifted people. We have the innate abilities, the mental capacity and the physical resilience to survive wherever we go. The evidence of our resilience in the face of challenges, starting all over whenever we fail and succeeding against all odds, are on display all over the world. From Europe to the Americas, from Asia to Australia, it is the same story of how much exploits Nigerians are making. 

We just need to start thinking critically. We need to start changing what and how we have been believing about ourselves. The courage to fail and start again; the courage to dismantle those dangerous, retrogressive mindsets we have been living with as well as the courage to reject religious beliefs and practices that create false hope, laziness and dependence out of us. We must begin a radical process to lasting progress. 

Dear Nigerians, we have arrived at that critical stage in our national progress when we should begin to tell uncomfortable truths to our minds and get used to them. We must begin to accept the reality that God will never do everything for us. He won't cause the prices of foreign currencies to drop relative to the purchasing value of our Naira; no God won't do that. We have to stop importing what we can afford to produce locally. No amount of prayer and prophesying can compel God to stop our petroleum pump prices from rising; only a functional crude oil refinery can solve that problem. 

Again, we must accept that the problems of Inflation, unemployment, etc cannot be solved by our long nights of prayer and fasting in our religious houses- no we cannot solve them that way no matter how long we pray and speak in tongues; we can only solve these problems by building and strengthening the productive capacities of both the private and the public sectors through deliberate and sincere government interventions. 

We must be intentional about building infrastructure; we must fix the roads, solve the problem of our seemingly intractable power supply epilepsy, restructure our educational systems and institutions into enviable centres of scientific and technological excellence- this will make them more competitive and attractive to foreign students, thereby attracting the needed foreign exchange earnings into our Treasury. We must also continue to provide an enabling environment for SMEs to thrive.

We must fix our electoral system and make it more independent than it is now in addition to sanitizing the judiciary of all corrupt judges and officers who dispense questionable judgements. We must be serious and sincere in our fight against corruption.

As citizens too, we should develop a new orientation about our electoral choices. We must stop selling our votes and conscience. We should understand that voting credible candidates into critical positions of authority has a direct bearing on the kind of governance we eventually get; whether leadership will be people-oriented or not. 

These are not problems that require prayer and fasting. No.  Solving these problems require a radical shift in thinking and action.

 Critical thinking is the gateway to critical consciousness, a term used meaningfully by Paulo Freire, a Brazillian education philosopher in his "Education for Critical Consciousness". Paulo Freire (1970) conceived of critical consciousness while working with adult laborers in Brazil. Freire realized that inequality is sustained when the people most affected by it are unable to decode their social conditions. Freire proposed a cycle of critical consciousness development that involved gaining knowledge about the systems and structures that create and sustain inequity (critical analysis), developing a sense of power or capability (sense of agency), and ultimately committing to take action against oppressive conditions (critical action). ( See El-Amin et al, 2017). 

Freire espoused 3 levels of consciousness. The lowest stage is called intransitive thought in which the subject believes that they cannot change their life, and that fate is out of their hands and that it is a matter of luck. More religious people would believe that only god make changes in their life so they put no effort into changing things. The second/middle stage is semi-transitive thought where the subject is slightly empowered. They have the mind to change things but they are pessimistic and deal with problems that arise one at a time. They also naively follow strong leaders who they hope to make the change so that they don’t have to. The final stage is critical transitivity where the subjects demonstrate the highest level of thought and action. They believe that they themselves can make changes. ( Wheeler, 2016)

With Critical Thinking, we can achieve the third level of consciousness for personal and national emancipation. We must begin and the time is now. 

Think right! Let us initiate the change from within us and cause it to resonate everywhere.

© Ogiri John Ogiri.

References

El-Amin et al (2017) Critical Consciousness: A Key to Students' Achievement, accessed at kappanonline.org

Freire, Paulo, 1921-1997. ( 1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York :Seabury Press,

Silvano Borruso (1998) The Art of Thinking: Chats on Logic, The Paulines Africa.

Wheeler, L (2016) Participatory Performance Practice on Freire’s 3 Levels of Consciousness.