Skeptics CircleI am a critical thinker. I am a skeptic. Sometimes that’s seen as a bad thing; I hear comments like “You should be more open to new ideas”, or “How can you be so skeptical when you haven’t tried it?”. Is being skeptical the same as being close-minded? I don’t think it is. I haven’t tried eating rat poison, but I know it will make me sick because I’ve examined the evidence. I have an open mind, it’s just not so open that my brain falls out.

Nearly seventy years ago, thousands of Americans were fooled into believing that a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds was real news, that their country was actually being invaded by hostile martians. I would hope that we’ve learned to think more critically in the past seventy years, but sometimes I’m not so sure.

Every year, thousands of people are scammed out of their money by lottery scams, pyramid schemes, “Nigeria” scams, psychics, astrologers, bizarre products with unfounded medical claims, faith healers, religions, cults, fake charities and more. It seems that when it comes to health, wealth or happiness, some people are willing to believe anything.

The people who believe these things are apparently unable to examine and evaluate the information they are given. They don’t understand the need to gather more information from other sources before accepting something. Would these people convict someone of murder just because someone told them he was a murderer?

I believe critical thinking should be a mandatory part of education throughout elementary and high school. It should be given as much importance as reading, writing and arithmetic. Children should be given the skills they need to evaluate information objectively and with healthy skepticism. Children should be taught to question everything and accept nothing at face value.

Let’s give our children the skills they need to survive in an information rich world and vaccinate them against gullibility.