The “Free Citizen” Civil Initiatives Support Centre NGO organized seminars on “Critical Thinking”, for the schoolchildren representing Ashtarak and Armavir communities on 22 and 23 June respectively. The seminars were organised within the framework of the “For Overcoming Radicalization, Xenophobia and Hatred among the Youth of Armenia” sub-grant project implemented by the “Free Citizen” NGO in the scope of the EU funded “Commitment to constructive Dialogue” Project.
About 38 pupils from Ashtarak and Armavir community participated in the training.
During the course, the students obtained idea about the components, types and advantages of critical thinking. Before proceeding to the theoretical part, the students were given the following task: to look at the pictures of strangers and receive vague information about them, about the personal qualities and some actions they had performed. Further the pupils were offered to vote for the complete picture of these people, as well as perform certain actions against them (e.g. rewarding or shooting). As a result, the low level of critical thinking led to the glorification of Jemal Pasha, the organizer of Armenian Genocide and the denouncing Yeghishe Charents, one of the greatest Armenian poets, and some of the pupils, even proposed to shoot him. This exercise is a very good example for pupils to approach any question critically, without ungrounded generalizations, and to explore the task and the problem thoroughly before making an opinion or decision.
Pupils were also introduced to the model of the Finnish school where the emphasis is on the development of critical thinking among students. And this is one of the main reasons why the Finnish school is one of the best educational models in the world and is trying to follow the example of many countries that seek to have a good educational system. At the end, a question and answer session took place, during which the incompletely grasped parts were clarified and exchange of ideas related to critical thinking.
