Making decisions intelligently, rationally and with a sense of personal investment requires a considerable degree of critical thinking. To choose badly based on disinformation or high emotionality, rather than on the intelligent interpretation of data, leads us down a path from which there is often no safe return. Thomas Jefferson wrote that a well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy. That is why one of the most important attributes for citizenship in that democracy is our ability to use intelligent habits of mind to interpret data, to distill disinformation from sound information, to use the best information to make sound and rational decisions to solve the many complex and varied problems that arise. Thinking Matters: A Guide to Making Wiser and More Thoughtful Decisions offers readers an opportunity to examine what it means to use intelligent habits of mind to make wise, rational and informed choices, and deal more logically with problems that impact their lives.
Selma Wassermann is Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Author of more than 30 books, she is the recipient of the University Excellence in Teaching Award.
Dr. Wassermann has spent an entire career training and writing for teachers to ensure that their professional objectives are maximally focussed around going beyond the imparting of facts and concepts to the advancement of thinking and inquiry to solve problems and arrive at knowledge. This life of experience makes her one of the best prepared scholars I know to attend to how the wider population of citizens might be led to a more thoughtful approach to the dilemmas posed by the modern information overload. Thinking Matters: A Guide to Making Wiser and More Thoughtful Decisions transforms a well worked out pedagogy of thinking and inquiry to service the wider population so much in need of thinking skills and strategies at this time. --George Ivany, president emeritus, University of Saskatchewan Thinking Matters: A Guide to Making Wiser and More Thoughtful Decisions is a vital self-help book. It should be on everyone's bookshelf. It is a guide to developing thinking skills. Once those skills are well developed you will easily be able to evaluate other self-help books and, with some work, navigate the river of information in which we swim every day. This is a good book to read with a friend or group of friends with whom you can do the exercises and examine each other's responses. Moreover, after you read it, you are likely to be amazed at the faulty thinking of the people around you or reports from established, reliable information sources. The exercises you will be asked to do cover a wide range of subjects. And, there are no right answers! Instead, you be flexing and strengthening your "thinking muscles." Moreover, the exercises should pique your curiosity and make you want to learn more about the subjects about which you've been asked to think. Getting your thinking in shape, like getting your body in shape, takes work and can't be done overnight. But the payoff is that you will make better decisions and be better able to deal with the flood of mis- and dis-information that comes our way every day. You will feel more self-assured, and you will be more competent. --Stanley Feder, PhD, political scientist. McLean Virginia Wise and thoughtful decision making is vital if our democracy is to survive and thrive. In today's world where news outlets and social media disseminate a mixture of information/misinformation 24/7, only well-developed critical thinking skills can separate the two and lead citizens to make decisions based on sound thinking. ThinkingMatters delivers the means to make this happen." --William C. Cliett Jr., Ph.D, former superintendent of schools, Gainesville, Florida
