Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is synonymous with becoming an engineer. You cannot practice engineer if you are not working problems out and expressing your thoughts rationally and logically. The main reason engineers need to possess advanced critical thinking is because lives are often at stake due to their measurements, decisions, and and analysis. Rarely do you hear about it, but it does happen, that a structure collapsed, a vehicle combusted, etc. due to a "engineering error." It is never acceptable to allow people to suffer or families to lose a son, daughter, mom, or dad because you weren't analyzing the material correctly and understand the weaknesses.
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I like your appeal to the emotions when describing critical thinking in terms of engineering. It is definitely true that engineers are responsible for creating/fixing products that affect the lives of countless people. As long as you avoid the "stirring symbols" argument, this would be an extremely effective way of arguing the relevance of critical thinking in the engineering curriculum.
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