Episode 022: Nurturing Young Skeptics: Essential Guide to Teaching Critical Thinking to Kids and Teens with Kathy Gibbens

When is the last time your kids were learning something in school and you got totally pulled in?

That happened to today’s podcast guest, Kathy Gibbens, when her daughter was learning logic and critical thinking in middle school, and Kathy became a mom on a mission.

She realized critical thinking is, well, critical to our society thriving and started teaching others things like logical fallacies and how to spot propaganda and emotion-driven marketing.

I adored our conversation in this podcast! Look forward to some learning and some great challenges to become a better parent and a better person. Listen for:

• the deets on WHY critical thinking isn’t taught in schools (it was intentional!! What???)
• tons of easy-to-learn terms that open up the world of logic
• why life is better for those who can think well
• simple steps to take to foster critical thinking in your home
• some really HARD steps to take to foster critical thinking in your home! 😉
• how helping little kids build their critical thinking muscles is different than tweens and teens
• why it’s a gargantuan problem if your teens aren’t disagreeing with you…yes, I said are NOT disagreeing with you
• some super tips to help our kids take ownership of their health and nutrition

Seriously, this is a fantastic interview – I told Kathy when we started that I typically shoot for half an hour podcasts, but the more fascinating the interview, the longer I generally let it slide. By the timestamp you can see that I couldn’t stop asking questions and eating up everything Kathy was dishing out!

Can’t see the video? Watch Teaching Critical Thinking here on YouTube!

No time for the video? Here are the notes!

These timestamps align with the audio podcast, not the video (although they’ll be fairly close).

• 0:22: Today I’m hosting Kathy Gibbens to talk all about critical thinking. Kathy is a homeschool mom who teaches critical thinking in short, fun episodes on her podcast, and is passionate about helping the next generation learn to think. (Kathy is also going to be a season three #LifeSkillsNow summer camp camp leader!)
• 2:16: Kathy shares how she became interested in learning logic and critical thinking. Here’s the book, The Fallacy Detective, that she mentioned.
• 3:49: Critical thinking skills are so life-changing because when you can filter the messages that you’re getting, and you can recognize propaganda or marketing now you have a footing to stand on.
• 4:41: When you can’t think critically, whoever is more emotional, or whoever can shout the loudest wins. It’s not good for us to constantly listen to shouting and outrage. That’s a really rough way to go emotionally and mentally.

What Is a Logical Fallacy?

• 6:29: How do you define a logical fallacy? What about all those other critical-thinking words like propaganda and bias?
• 7:46: A fallacy is an error. Logical is just having to do with thinking. So a logical fallacy is just an error in thinking.
• 7:57: There are over 300 different named logical fallacies.
• 8:00: Propaganda is a tactic that is used to manipulate people mentally and emotionally. We see this happening in governments and in ad campaigns.
• 9:13: A cognitive bias or a mental bias is when something about us or something about the way we see the world affects our ability to think well or to think critically.

Why Aren’t We Teaching Critical Thinking to Kids Anymore?

• 9:54: Of all the words that we’ve been talking about so far, propaganda is the only one I was ever taught in school, why are schools not teaching this stuff?

• 11:12: Kathy tells us the history of why we won’t learn critical thinking skills in schools anymore. I can’t believe it was actually an intentional choice to remove it from the curriculum! Listen in for the longer version of the story, but the short version is that our modern education system is based on the idea that when men come to fighting age, they shouldn’t think for themselves, they need to obey orders.
• 12:52: These new schools in Prussia worked to produce obedient soldiers, and Horace Mann brought the idea to the United States. It wasn’t well received by parents who viewed it as putting their kids in a factory to churn out cookie-cutter citizens, but of course, this was the beginning of our modern education system.
• 14:00: In the early 1900s they started removing logic as a requirement in our American education system. Some schools still teach it, but it’s no longer required.

The best way to learn critical thinking is right alongside your kids. You will have a lot of fun with it, and really good family discussions! -Kathy Gibbens

• 16:16: There are many benefits to having critical thinking skills. When you can critically think you won’t ride the emotional roller coaster, and be caught up in propaganda, and groupthink. It makes things very, very clear. You can more easily see the truth.

Threats to Critical Thinking

• 17:12: Kathy shares the top 3 threats to critical thinking she sees today.
• 17:23: Number one is emotionalism. People view their emotions as being the most important thing about them. As the most important thing, that guides their decision-making process.

• 18:47: Number two is relativism. We are living in an era where our kids are being taught there is no objective truth. Whatever I think to be true is true. Whatever you think to be true is true. If everything is true, nothing is true.
• 19:32: The last thing is normalcy bias. Normalcy bias is when we think things are going to stay the same or that they are as they always have been. That’s not always true, things change, information changes, and we have to be open to that.

Teaching Critical Thinking to Kids

• 21:52: Let’s talk about practical routines and habits to teach these critical thinking skills to our kids. The first step is to learn the vocabulary.
• 22:35: Next, make it normal to ask lots of questions. When your kids are little, it’s going to be things like: Well, what do you think will happen next? What do you think you should do first here? Why do you think this happened? As they get older, you can ask deeper questions like: What do you think their motivation was behind that? What do you think they want you to feel when they say this? What do you think will happen when we eat this? What do you think will happen if we don’t eat this?
• 23:14: Number three, use what’s around you to spark a conversation. You can use a story on the news, something on social media, or a personal experience from your family and have your child think through it critically. Ask questions like: What do you think? What are they saying? Is it true? Is there a fallacy here? And if so, what is it?
• 23:41: Number four is to not get upset when your kids question you. Rather than saying, don’t argue with me, let’s teach them to do it well. Teach them how to look for both sides of an argument to understand both sides and teach them to look for alternate solutions.
• 24:38: Lastly, what we call narration. Kathy’s dad did this and it drove her and her siblings crazy as kids, but now she can see that what he was doing was his way of transmitting his worldview and his values. Narrate life, and tell your kids what you think about the world around you and what’s happening around you.

• 26:10: Are you feeling a little nervous about this? Sounds like a big responsibility, but anybody can learn how to do this. Make it fun! Start with informal logic which is just the logical fallacies. Jump in, learn this with your kids have fun with it.
• 28:49: If you have really little kids (think 2-4-year-olds) you can start by asking questions to get into the habit and lay the foundation. For example: Which blocks do you think should go on the bottom? Why do you think they should go on the bottom? What would happen if you put the round block on the bottom versus the square block on the bottom? Give them different scenarios and interesting things to think about.

• 29:45: Kids are naturally curious, lean into that and let it fuel your own curiosity. Stop giving them all the answers. Ask “What do you think?” If they have an idea: “Oh, that’s an idea. Let’s try it!” even if you think it will fail, let it fail. That’s how we learn.

What If Your Kids Don’t Learn Critical Thinking?

• 30:46: What are some red flags that your middle or high schooler is falling off the critical thinking bandwagon? A big one is if they stop expressing their disagreement with you, their friends, or advertisements. 

We don’t want our kids to just go along with everything their friends say or the news says. We want to raise adults who can think for themselves. -Kathy Gibbens

• 33:52: Dr. Gordon Neufeld talks about peer orientation and how this is a great risk to our whole culture. We need a vertical passing on of values, from parents to children, but when kids become peer-oriented there’s a horizontal passing of values which means they’re not learning anything new, but replicating themselves based on their peers.
• 35:17: Of course, you need to teach your child to push back respectfully and to back up their arguments. We aren’t just saying to encourage your kids to question you because they’re grumpy. Teach them to think critically, call them out on logical fallacies they make, and ask them questions to develop their arguments.
• 36:37: Here at Kids Cook Real Food^™, we really want our kids to take ownership of their health. We can teach our kids to take ownership of their own health with their critical thinking skills. Number one, teach your kids to recognize marketing tactics and propaganda. There’s specific messaging that is happening in the messages that we’re getting about food.
• 38:42: Number two, teach them to recognize appeals to emotion. There’s a lot of emotion around food and the marketing of food. If we can separate the emotion from the food, then we can just make wise choices because it’s wise.
• 39:54: Lastly, sometimes we have to let our kids experience and recognize the consequences of their choices. Sometimes that means letting them get a tummy ache, or a headache, and letting them feel good when they do eat well. Let your kids be the judge over if they’re hungry or full. We teach them to override their own natural sense of hunger by making them eat more or constantly questioning if they’re really full.

• 41:08: We leave you with a message of hope. 

If you just teach them this one skill, give them some healthy skepticism, they are armed, and they will be impervious to the messages that they are bombarded with every day. -Kathy Gibbens

• 43:15: Kathy has her own podcast where she teaches about logical fallacies. You can find it anywhere podcasts can be listened to. Start with episode one because it’s almost a mini-course. Listen with your kids on the way home from school or sports practice and then talk about it and ask questions. Kathy also has a free quiz you can find here. 

Resources We Mention for Critical Thinking

• Sign up for #LifeSkillsNow season three for free!
• Katie’s TEDx talk on the importance of critical thinking
• The Fallacy Detective
• The Tuttle Twins Guide to Logical Fallacies
• Find Kathy online
• Follow her on social media: Instagram, Facebook
• Listen to her podcast: Filter it Through a Braincell
• The quiz Kathy mentioned to guess logical fallacies

Kathy is a homeschool Mom who first learned about logical fallacies along with her 7th-grade daughter. She quickly realized that this little-taught skill is essential for navigating all the crazy messages we are being bombarded with by culture. In 2021, Kathy launched the Filter It Through a Brain Cell podcast, where she teaches critical thinking in short, fun episodes and is passionate about helping the next generation learn to think well.