Workshop - Thinking Activity
At the department of English of MK Bhavnagar University we had the workshop of thinking activity by Prof. Milan Pandya . He is a teacher, trainer and educator in the field of thinking skills. he is a specialist in critical, creative and design thinking. It was a two days seminar(13th and 14th August) for the students of the Department of English.
in the beginning our classmate greeted prof. Milan Pandya.
Than our department Head Dr. Dilip Barad sir gave brief introduction about Milan sir.
The workshop was for two days. On day 1 Milan sir discussed what is creative or critical thinking and have to develop it and how to apply it. On the day2 we did some activities to learn and increase our ability of creative thinking.
Day 1
The workshop started on 13th august. The very first question that the professor asked was “what is creative or critical thinking?”
When we gave that question some thought and also had some hard time to think it out, some of us tried to interpret the meaning of it. Later sir explained it to us.
The critical thinking depends on three aspects,
logical
Rational
Scientific
The way to think critically happens by those three points. when we have to think critically and i think in the present time is the time when we have to observe everything and check facts to understand reality and truth we have to think critically we need to be logical, rational and think scientifically.
Professor Milan Pandya gave his own definition of creative thinking and that is
“ Thinking about thinking in order to improve thinking”
In his definition he used word thinking three types that reflect the importance of thinking.
The thinking of one person reflects his or her ideology, psychology, nature and capacity of applying logic or separating their emotions while making their opinions.
He said that ”context is everything” and if we find that we can understand the situation or problem. To apply critical thinking Milan sir gave this key sentence,
“If something is true, what else has to be true”
To apply this sentence he also gave some examples to us.
The first example he gave us was a photo of an advertisement for Lux soup by Kareena Kapoor.
The question was why she is smiling in the advertisement? It was the ad of lux soap that give three rupees discount and that's why she is smiling in the photo, but if we critically think about about it we can understand that the actress comes from wealthy background and she is the type of the persons that don't even have to see the price of anything that they want to buy. So, smiling for a three rupees discount in the advertisement is not appropriate in her positions. It is only limited to her role of promoting the soup.
Second example was of an Indian drama series “Yeh hai Mohabbatein”
By the fist look at the picture you can not find any flow in it. It was just a normal photo of a husband(maybe typical Indian) trying to help his wife. But we have to find a flow in it and it has one. The flow was that the wife was wearing perfect makeup and had a very beautiful hairstyle that leads to great handwork to one who is injured by one hand but there she was, having those things perfectly done but not able to wear her saree. Then we can say that it does not have any reality, but just a dramatic situation of lame writing.
3rd, 4th and 5th example was about people who are in higher position or famous
Like Satish Shah, Shraddha Kapoor and a politician provides false information to the public on social media knowingly or unknowingly.
Importance of those examples was to think thoroughly about whether it was intentional or an innocent mistake. If we think deeply about those things we can find a critical point of view.
If someone claims that something is truth that they have to prove that what they say is truth because
“Burden of proof lies on the person who claims.”
We can understand this by the example of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial(the example is given by me).
I am not saying that she was wrong or Johnny was right, but if she is right about her claim then she needs to provide proof.
Professor Milan Pandya concluded 1st day by giving a quote of Tao Te Ching
“Your teacher might be wrong, learn to think for yourself”
Sir said that you don't have to believe everything you are taught because sometimes your teacher also can make mistakes, if you analyse things and have a critical point of view then you can come up with creative ideas and find what is true.
Day 2
Day two was all about activities to understand what creativity is, understand where it lies and how much we can think creatively.
Our day started with whether men are rational or not. For that Milan Sir said that,
“ Men have the capacity to practise rationality.”
He said that for men to be rational they need training. Men are not born with rationality, so it depends on what he learns. Man is also an emotional animal, so if he cultivates rationality then he can be rational. He needs to be critical and creative.
Creativity lies in four steps. They are,
Person
Process
Press
product
To understand creativity sir gave us a picture that contains various symbols and items, and asked us to categories those differently.
Some of us came up with different creative categories like,
Nature vs science
Religion vs modernity
Journey of inner and outward
Things that are in cirlce
Creative vs destructive
Different proverbs like- ‘Pen is mightier then sword’, 'Hardwork is the key to success’,
Different literary works like- Macbeth, Othello, The Gun Island, The Home and The World, Journey to the centre of the Earth.
The second activity was about solving problems provided by Milan sir. The two problems he gave were paradoxical, which makes us dilemma and makes us in situations very hard to solve.
First problem was trolley problem, in which you see five people on a railway track and there is other track where is only one person, you have a gear to change the way or trolley, if you change the way five people will be saved but one person dies and if you don't change the way five people will die.
The second problem was the footbridge dilemma, in which you see five people off the bridge and train running toward them and one giant person is on the bridge. If you want to save those people you have to push the giant person and he will die.
Those questions were hard to answer because they put us in a dilemma that either way someone is going to die and that makes us uneasy.
My learning throughout this workshop-
We all think but not always critically or not for all the things. Sometimes we are driven by emotions or beliefs, that we sideline critical thinking. Sometimes we don't question what we are convenience to believe.
We are living in a time where we always have to be critical and observing. Not everything that we are taught, said and asked and what we see and hear is true. We have to become critical and creative in thinking in order to keep up the right path of knowledge. We can be distracted, deceived , deluded easily and if we do that we will create a chain of misinformation and miss belief because what we know or understand we pass to the others because humans are the race who like to talk and communicate they like to tell stories they like to gossip. So, we have to become critical and creative thinkers.
thank you for visiting.
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