Nonsense to Sense: A Way to Critical Thinking Development

Human brains tend to assign meanings to all objects and doings around. Not all constructions applied during these processes are correct. They then result in mistakes, confusions or misconceptions. Today, the Internet is often used as a medium for spreading such unsound information generally described as “fake news” or “conspiracy theories”. If we do not want our students to be overwhelmed by them, we have to search for methods helping them to disclose common logical failures and delusions. To do so, the author demonstrates to his learners how easily false information can be produced by hiding and/or modifying regular information. To disclose errors in this type of information, one has to find missing or misinterpreted pieces using a similar approach - to analyze its input elements, their robustness and relevance and then to study correctness of the process of their combination and reasoning. Our aim is to point to the moments which can decide whether person's thinking is of high quality. In our presentation, we present our approach by a series of examples demonstrating nonsenses and absurd statements in Mathematics. Maths is often presented as a “magic wand” for developing critical thinking skills. We show that the relationship between mathematics and critical thinking is more complex. The problem lies in the ambiguity of natural language. By showing differences and discrepancies between the two, the learners may recognize the most frequent faults and become capable to disclose their own fallacies. This ability should become an integral part of their critical thinking weaponry.The simplicity, transparency and humorous character of our examples attracts students to participate in an intellectual game which covers all aspects of total quality framework: credibility, analyzability, transparency and usefulness. Our presented problems may inspire other educators to generate their own “nonsenses” specific for their courses in order to build a solid and structured basis for their disciplines.