‘Critical Thinking’ should be a subject in schools because that’s what employees require – Educationist tells FG

Dr. Leo Igwe, an educationist, has advised the federal government to, introduce critical thinking as a subject for primary school pupils.

According to Dr. Igwe, critical thinking should be a subject in primary schools because it is one of the top skills that employers now require from prospective employees and also it is part of recognized areas by national policy on education.

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He said, “Our appeal to the government is to help in introducing the subject. Because, the government has put it in the national policy, but, it is important that they also encourage the development of the materials. Critical thinking materials. There should be books, workshops, and critical thinking materials in our schools.

“So this is my appeal to the Federal government to understand that we already have it in the national policy, but we need one more step which is developing the materials and encouraging the use of critical thinking materials in our schools.

“One thing is that critical thinking is one of the top skills and recently, the world economic forum identified critical thinking as one of the skills that employers of labour are going to look out for.

“So, that is number one. Number two, critical thinking is also part of the skills that the national policy on education says that primary education should be encouraged.

“Page 10 of the national policy on education says that the aim of primary education is to encourage the teaching of critical thinking skills.

“But, we don’t have books that encouraged or helped to cultivate critical thinking skills. What I have done is to help develop critical thinking materials which we are now using as part of critical thinking materials.

“I am the one behind the critical thinking project whose aim is to introduce critical thinking as a subject at primary schools. So, in Oyo State, we have been given a go-ahead to organize workshops in the primary schools with a goal of seeing how this subject could be introduced”.