Think For Yourself

You can’t think for yourself…

Let “Big Brother” think for you, he knows what’s best. Jacob already tells us “thinking for yourself is impossible” (Jacobs 36).

It’s hard for us to really think and figure out our problems. It is SO easy for us NOT to think! I think this is why I feel like so many kids my age are not properly equipped to move onto the “adult life.” Kids are being trained not to think or question ideas/concepts. We are supposed to blindly follow what our authorities tell us.

In almost any circumstance where we are learning, we take what the teacher says and we don’t question it! We assume that they know what they are talking about. While we should trust the instructor, I don’t think we should assume that they know everything and are always right. It’s okay to question and say, “Oh, something about that isn’t quite right.”

I had one teacher in high school, who would always think that everything she taught was absolutely right and everyone else was wrong. Being the stubborn person I am, I would often ask questions to try to get her to question her statements and she would shut them down in fear that I might actually be right. This happened quite frequently with other students as well. This would be an example of how teachers try to limit our individual thinking.

I have found that when teaching, the best way to get students to think for themselves is through questions that require critical thinking. If we ask “why does this happen” instead of “what happened,” it brings us out of the grammar stage of justs facts, into the rhetorical stage of learning where we ask the questions, “So what?” “Why does this matter?” “How does this affect me?”

This reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and how one of the main things that continually pops into my mind is how individual thinking is NOT permitted. If a person breaks this “social norm” by asking questions, reading books, or THINKING FOR THEMSELVES, they are arrested or killed! At the same time, we do not like to think for ourselves. We like to remain in our old ways and thoughts. It is hard to think for yourself and to ask those hard questions of “Why does this matter?” We, sometimes, like to be stubborn and stay on our own paths and not see the other side of the argument because it will disagree with us and we will have to think harder about why we think the way we do.

This all leads me to my next point, individuality. As I’ve been reading these books, I’ve noticed that no one is allowed to be different, we all have to be the same. In Fahrenheit 451, they are encouraged to not be different, to go along with what “big brother” says. In our society today, while we are encouraged to be unique, we can’t be too unique. We still have to fit in with what our culture says and wants and if we go against them, we are criticized and ostracized.

As I mentioned in the beginning with let “Big Brother” think for you because he knows what’s best. What is best for one person, is not always the best for another. We are all different and require different learning styles. This is one reason I believe Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World make us cringe so much! In those books, they take away that sense of individuality and try to make us all the same and we were not created for that! We were made to thinking critically, and have new and different ideas and to share those ideas with others.