Critical and Creative Thinking

If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer Isabella Tree Comments 1.      What Isabella and her husband have done at Knepp is beautiful. But we simply cannot use it as a general justification for eating meat. The Knepp estate supplies 0.0075% of the beef the UK eats, and there is nowhere else like it. So what if everywhere was like Knepp, producing 54kg of meat/hectare? The UK's 17.2m ha of farmland would produce slightly less beef than the UK eats. And nothing else. Knepp is wonderful. But as a general model it's a formula for starvation. As you know, I strongly support rewilding - of infertile and unproductive land. I do not support rewilding as a substitute for productive crop-growing. The amazing thing about a plant-based diet is that it uses far less land, releasing more for rewilding. According to the estimates by Simon Fairlie (himself a small livestock keeper), a vegan diet could feed all the UK's people on just 3m hectares of land. A...

SUMMARY OF THE LECTURE BY STEPHEN BROOKFIELD ON CREATIVE AND CREATIVE THINKING The lecture of Stephen Brookfield, author of " Teaching for Critical Thinking: Tools and Techniques to Help Students Question their Assumptions"  (Jossey Bass 2011), delivered the keynote address at the 2012 DePaul University Teaching Commons Fall Forum. In his presentation, Dr. Brookfield explains how university instructors can challenge students' assumptions and model the exploration of alternative perspectives. He also presents several practical activities that encourage creative and critical thinking in the classroom. Indeed, a person who thinks critically is able to: Identify assumptions behind thinking and actions Check assumptions for accuracy and validity Take informed action In addition he pointed out that an informed action is one based on evidence/experience that can be justified, an action that has its assumptions known and checked, something that stands a chance of a...

Emotional Self-Management   Reflection  For me, the emotions that are most difficult to manage when others disagree with me are:  -Acceptance -Tolerance I deal with these by: First things first, I always look for their most pure comments about the topic. Those comments must have a support or something reliable to be expressed from, if that comment or emotion is not based on something I really consider trustworthy, such as research projects or databases, I just ignore the person's opinion because it is going to be useless to discuss something like that.  If the opinion is assertive and supported by good arguments, then I start saying what I consider for me, myself, and I, remarkable to discuss. It seems easy but, taken to reality, it is much harder since at the moment of the disagreement you are thoughtless and speechless because of your own emotions. Influences on my thinking   Reflection For me, the influences on my own thinking need to be most a...