It is imperative that educators help students to develop critical thinking and reasoning ability. Helping students to learn a particular subject or topic is not the only responsibility of an educator. An educator must help students to learn how to learn. They must help students to develop and strengthen their metacognitive skills. Students must become aware of epistemology and how it has, can, and will affect them personally. That is why the development of critical thinking and reasoning ability is crucial. These skills will benefit the students both inside and outside of the classroom. These skills will help students to profit throughout their academic careers and beyond. These skills are at the core of achieving academic competence and being a life long learner.

Critical thinking will assist students in gaining and capitalizing on knowledge. This skill, in particular, is necessary in analyzing information. Being that students now have the access to the Internet, a wealth of information, students will need to analyze the information they receive. They will need to determine the relevancy of the information, the reliability of the source from which they received the information, and the usefulness of the information. Students with strong critical thinking ability will not accept everything they are told as fact. Instead, they will use their critical thinking skills to guide them in their search for absolute truth.

Reasoning ability, too, will help students to analyze information. Reasoning ability will help students to search for meaning in the information they are given. What they learn in school will not be mere facts. Passing an examination will not be their sole purpose for learning. They will begin to appreciate the well-known cliché that knowledge is power. They will learn to analyze data in particular; and draw conclusions from the data they encounter. Reasoning ability will help students to search out patterns in the data they gather. They will be able to create mathematical models based on these patterns. These models will help them to predict outcomes. This skill will aid student in their quest for academic success. It will also assist students in the real world, as they come to find out that there are patterns throughout the universe. Students will come to appreciate this skill even more when they become aware of the observable patterns in human behavior that can help them to predict the actions of others.

These skills—critical thinking and reasoning ability—will help students to find absolute truth. Although information, data, principles, and knowledge itself is often subject to debate and interpretation, there is an absolute truth. There may be a number of methods of finding a solution to a problem, but there is generally only one answer. In situations where there are several solutions to a problem, one solution tends to be more effective than others. Comparison of the solutions may be based on a number of factors. The relevance and importance of these factors may be subject to opinion and preference. Nonetheless, each person should work toward finding the answers to all questions they have. It may seem that the truth spoken of here is relative to each person—as opposed to absolute. However, there is an absolute truth. It is a truth that is determined by divine authority. Although humans do not have the capability of establishing such truth, critical thinking skills and reasoning ability will help them in their quest toward finding absolute truth, the perfect solution, and the best way to go.

This lays a heavy demand on educators. Educators must facilitate learning in a way that will help students to establish and strengthen their critical thinking and reasoning ability. One method for doing so is cooperative learning. When students learn cooperatively, they are able to take the best ideas of a group to determine a solution that is better than what they could come up with on their own. This is because the solution will take into account the opinions, preferences, background, abilities, and strengths of a diverse group. The students’ critical thinking and reasoning ability will help them to scrutinize, criticize, build on, and ameliorate the ideas of each member. This kind of teamwork and group effort will certainly offer students advantages in their academic careers, their personal life, and their place of employment.

Another tool educators can use in helping students is the use of inquiry. Teaching by inquiry affords students the opportunity to learn through discovery. While students engage in discovery their critical thinking and reasoning ability will help them to filter information based on relevance, reliability, and usefulness. They will not look to gain absolute truth from their instructors. They will have ascertained how to learn on their own. Thus, their learning will not be limited to the classroom. They will be cognizant of the fact that learning can take place anywhere.