On Cultivating Students' Critical Thinking In Junior Ideology And Morality Teaching

Nowadays our society is in the times full of sensational knowledge, where knowledge producing and the information delivering are very fast. And it is also the one where creation is needed and people are encouraged to create the new things. This makes social members must cultivate the ability of critical thinking and form the habit of critical thinking. Therefore, cultivation of critical thinking should be one of the key targets of the carrying-out school quality education, and also should be the aggressive response of reform on new curriculum.As a result of different knowledge structures or starting points, many scholars and educators hold the different opinions on the critical thinking. As for the current situation of ideology and morality teaching, junior students' mental state and thinking characteristics and the author's practice in the present education reform region, the author brings forward such following problems: how to understand and define critical thinking? Why is it necessary for critical thinking cultivation in junior ideology and morality teaching? What are feasible conditions for critical thinking cultivation? How to cultivate critical thinking? The essay can be divided into eight parts.Part one: Early philosophy forms of western critical thinking. The essay discusses the critical thinking forms of Parmenides, Socrates, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Theory of Marxism Philosophy and tracks down the traditional origin of western critical thinking. And it also concludes the containing essential factors of contemporary critical thinking, that is, denial, questions, abandonment, dispute and reflection, etc. Western critical thinking is rational critique, based on formal logics.Part two: Thoughts summary of Chinese critical thinking. The essay analyses the questions, self-examination in Confucian theory and Mohist theory and shows that Chinese critical thinking emphasizes on preciseness of personal learning and personal moral and ethic education. Chinese critical thinking is moral critique, based on informal logics.Part three: Connotation of critical thinking and researches into critical thinking at home and abroad. With the reference of predecessors' statements on critical thinking, the essay defines the critical thinking, sums up its characteristics and also briefly analyses researches into critical thinking at home and abroad from 20 century.Part four: Demonstration on necessity and possibility of critical thinking cultivation in junior ideology and morality teaching.Part five: Description about the current situation of critical thinking in junior ideology and morality teaching and analysis of reasons for such situation.Part six: Contents of critical thinking cultivation in junior ideology and morality teaching, that is, cultivation of criticizing spirits and criticizing skills.Part seven: Deep description about how to cultivate students' critical thinking in junior ideology and morality teaching. This part is mainly about strategy and methods. The strategy consists of four parts: building the democratic equal relationship between teachers and students, guiding students to think independently, encouraging students to ask questions and establishing scientific appraisement system. The method consists of five parts: a hotspot discussion, a case analysis, a topic argument, a question and dialogue, a social investigation. At last, this part reminds teachers of something that they should notice in cultivating students' critical thinking.Part eight: Simple description about requirements for teachers in cultivating students' critical thinking in junior ideology and morality teaching. If teachers want to cultivate students' critical thinking, teachers should turn their teaching conception, change their teaching methods, rebuild their own knowledge structure, rebuild their ability structure and also develop the model "effect".