The recent study indicating that America’s students are not learning much critical thinking in college (half of students showed no improvement in two years) attracted more comments than any other post. Several of you said the problem needs to be tackled much earlier, in grade school or high school.

Given the sad state of education in the US, early or late, it would be good if kids could strengthen their complex reasoning skills outside of class. And maybe they can, with supplemental materials administered by parents. The Critical Thinking Company offers dozens of workbooks for skills such as

Cause and effect
Analogy
Map and diagram reading
Characteristics and classification
Similarities/differences
Logical sequences, and others.

They are often made interesting with a story and include both verbal

Critical thinking workbook

and figural analysis.

Critical thinking

These examples are from 12+ grade workbooks, but the series goes grade-by-grade from kindergarten level.

A quick Google search points to additional self-help or parent-administered aids for problem-solving and critical thinking.

When our own kids were young, we used to do brainteasers, round-robin storytelling, or what’s-wrong-with-this-statement challenges on car trips. I know it taught them to argue, “That’s not logical, Dad,” but I assume it had some good effects too.

I wish we’d had some of these materials back then to strengthen our attempts to get the kids thinking. If you know other ways families can help their children learn to think, please tell us.