“Our military education programs teach our leaders critical.docxVIP

THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING:A FUNDAMENTAL GUIDE FOR STRATEGIC LEADERS Colonel (Retired) Stephen J. Gerras, Ph.D.Professor of Behavioral SciencesDepartment of Command, Leadership, ManagementU.S.ArmyWarCollegeAugust 2008The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING:A FUNDAMENTAL GUIDE FOR STRATEGIC LEADERS “Technological advances alone do not constitute change. The most dramatic advances in military operations over history have been borne of ideas – ideas about warfighting, organization and doctrine. The Army’s most critical asset will not be technology; it will be critical thinking.”AUSA Torchbearer National Security Report, March 2005“Most Army schools open with the standard bromide: We are not going to teach you what to think…we are going to teach you how to think. They rarely do.”BG David A. Fastabend and Robert H. Simpson, February 2004 In the post Cold War security environment many senior leaders in the Army and throughout the Department of Defense have asserted a need to develop better critical thinking skills. The requirement for better critical thinkers stems from a realization that the complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity characteristic of the current environment mandates a need to refrain from Cold-War thinking methodologies and assumptions. As the epigraphs (above) suggest, there is a large gap between the Army’s desire to develop critical thinking skills and what actually happens. This gap is due not only to a general lack of understanding of what critical thinking is, but also a lack of education by both faculty and Army leadership on how to develop critical thinkers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of critical thinking and then make suggestions for how the Army can close the gap between the need to develop critical thinkers and