Govt Urged to Introduce Critical Thinking to Primary School Pupils

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

An educator, Dr. Leo Igwe, has called on the government at all levels in the country to introduce critical thinking as a subject for pupils in primary schools.

This is just as he advised governments to provide critical thinking materials in all primary schools across the country, noting that this is necessary because it is one of the top skills that employers now require from prospective employees.

Igwe while speaking in Ibadan during a workshop organised for teachers in some selected public primary schools in Oyo State, said the government should as a matter of urgency introduce it as a subject because it is part of recognised areas by national policy on education.

The author who spoke shortly after donating some critical thinking materials to pupils of selected public primary schools in the state appealed to governments to do everything possible to let the pupils develop critical thinking abilities at a young age.

“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 encourage.

“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 encourage or help 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 organise workshops in primary schools with a goal of seeing how this subject could be introduced.”