Americas Deficit: Critical Thinking Deficit - Essay Example

America’s deficit: Critical thinking deficit America has been experiencing a number of social, economic and political/democratic challenges for some time now with its forerunners denying this fact. America does not wish to accept that it is creating a new generation that presents many Americans with no jobs and education in addition to unimaginable debts. Opinion leaders and those with political powers are locking out the critical thinking and reasoning abilities of the members of the public, while leaving them in sheer desperation.

America, in the last three decades has failed miserably on integrating the resourceful views and opinions of the majority. In this regard, America has developed significant critical thinking deficits. This entails the ability to envisage possible alternatives to the existing problems or solutions. This has led to more problems in managing/utilising the available resources when direly needed. Historically, America had great leaders who were both knowledgeable and fostered critical thinking. However, with time, these leaders created a political system that dampened a free thinking society, where in the long run, the voiceless members of the society were separated from the public sphere.

In particular, the government was insulated from political scrutiny and the unrepresented groups did not find a chance to express their critical thoughts or grievances to the government. As much as the American government pushed for equality in one hand, critical thinking deficit kept haunting them in the other hand. For example, the religious tests for public office were banned in the constitution and separation of the church and the state was made formal in the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom.

This was a real form of critical thinking deficit of the members of the public – no one was allowed to think about this terrible move or provide a reasonable alternative. The people of America did not get a chance to exercise their critical thinking skills in the activities taking place in their very eyes. It is clear that minds that cannot see the truth behind forms of political deception cannot present prospective thoughts. For example, the 9/11 event left everyone murmuring, with critical thinking advances getting strategically destroyed in a bid to kill critical thinking and bury the truth behind the attack (Dower & Hein 4).

This was, in addition to the dampening of the calls for formulating constructive and reasonable approaches to the problem. Finally, critical thinking deficit is evident when America went to war in Afghanistan. In this case, no one was given an opportunity to discuss this decision and further critical thoughts about the possible alternatives were shut down (Dower & Hein 5). Whenever, people aimed at holding discussions with the selected commission, they were shut down or simply ignored. In addition, the subject of global warming and the possible solution to this problem lies in the ability to take part in reasoning out the possible future solutions and further providing a chance for critical reasoning discussions.

Ultimately, evident critical thinking deficits in America slow the solution-finding and implementation process of many other taunting problems. Work Cited Dower John W., Hein Laura. The Failure of Imagination: From Pearl Harbor to 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq. The Asia-Pacific Journal, 36 (2010): 1-10. Print.