Via Helen Lee Bouygues at Forbes, it looks like our Navy is trying to figure that out.
… the U.S. Navy has been conducting a major study that’s expected to lead to a radical shift in the education of its personnel. The Navy will almost certainly recommend doing far more to emphasize critical thinking skills in its training and development programs.
…
… the HTS team designed exercises in which the initial information led the soldiers to form one conclusion. But over the course of the exercise, the soldiers received new information, and they had to work to change their initial conclusions and associated assumptions.
As part of the exercise, educators also provided coaching on ways to better adjust to a fast-changing environment. For instance, the program encouraged soldiers to engage in hypothesis testing, which encourages people to sift through information and decide which pieces of information best support a hypothesis.As for the Navy study, the conclusions of the review will not be made public until later this month. Then the Secretary of the Navy will need to review the recommendations and decide which — if any — of the conclusions will be implemented.
From early reports, it seems clear that the Navy’s recommendations will focus on helping soldiers thinking more clearly. When Thomas Modly, the U.S. Undersecretary of the Navy, announced the effort, for instance, he argued that far more needs to be done to emphasize critical thinking.“The world that is emerging today is one in which continuous expansion of thought and capacity is necessary to achieve a competitive advantage,” Modly wrote. I couldn’t agree more.
I am skeptical how much we can move that needle because of how we bring people in to our Navy.
Critical thinking has two parts. Some it has to do with your hard-wired personality type, the other is how your education and upbringing either enhances or mitigates your natural inclinations.
The military brings people in from its host culture. We can refine and focus what comes across the transom, but largely – we have what we have unless we do more to select for personality type coming in, which is unlikely.
As such, if there is an ability to “train” someone to be better at critical thinking, then it is something it needs mostly to be taught before you get to the military. That involves how we educate our children – something the Navy cannot impact.
That being said, we can do a lot with the people we bring in. Nothing is 100% hard wired or complete. To refine what we have and reveal what is already inside our lifelines, we need to make sure we have the culture that enables that.
Critical thinking is not something that can be micro-managed. It is not something that can be put on a program. You cannot force it. You don’t create critical thinking, you create the conditions for it to reveal itself.
Do we encourage our best to think, read, and write on challenging topics, propose and debate without fear difficult issues – or do we reward party line obsequiousness?
Do we invite critique, or demand compliance?
The U.S. Naval Institute has a long track record of creating a corner for critical thinkers to debate amongst each other and the general public. It provides a venue for ideas to be examined, critiqued, improved, or – if measured and found wanting – dismissed. It is a venue and an attitude our Navy should look towards as a benchmark.
It is a record that USNI should be proud of, and should guard jealously. Critical thinking does not always bring critical acclaim. Often the minority opinion is the correct opinion. Settled opinion often does not mark success, but oppression.
Ideas have always been a threat to power and an obstacle to control. Those who are driven to both will seek out centers of critical thinking – and the critique that they generate – and will strive to control, steer – and if that fails – destroy.
Good that DOD in general and our Navy in particular want critical thinkers. I don’t think they need a special program to produce them – I think we already have a critical mass out there waiting for the signal.
You will get what you reward. Change demand signal, supply will adjust.
Reward critique.
