CRITICAL

PARTICIPATION

Endang L

In context of democratic society,

Critical thinking is a crucial aspect in the
competence citizens need to participate in
a plural and democratic society and that
enable them to make their own
contribution to that society (Geert ten Dam
and Volman, 2004)

Consider this happening

As a head of a Public Health Service in a
small town, Dokter Andi indicated many
heath problem in the town. He found that
diarrhea and DHF cases were increasing.
He thought that he had to do many things
to prevent the cases. Sanitation of the
environment, providing clean consumable
water, and any other program to prevent
the disease. As a good citizen, what do
you have to do to help him.

Consider these questions

1. What do a critical thinker do when he/she
finds this happening ?
2. What characters of citizens that a nation
need?
3. As a good citizen, what are you going to
do facing that problem?

An Ideal critical thinker

Inquisitiveness with regard to wide range of
issues
Concern to become and remain well informed
Alertness to opportunities to use critical thinking
Trust in the processes of reasoned inquiry
Self confidence in ones own abilities to reason
Open mindedness regarding divergent world
views

 Flexibility in considering alternatives and

opinions
Understanding of the opinions of other people
Fair mindedness in appraising reasoning
Honesty in facing ones own biases, prejudices,
stereotypes, or egocentric tendency
Prudence in suspending, making or altering
judgments
Willingness to reconsider and revise views
where honest reaction suggest that change is
warranted.

Character of critical citizen

Solve communities problem
Use reflective thinking: based on
evidence, and go through critical thinking
activities:
1. Interpretation is to comprehend and to
express the meaning or significance of a
wide variety of experiences, situations,
data, events, judgments, conventions,
beliefs, rule procedures or criteria.

 Analysis is to identify the intended and actual

inferential relationship among statements,
questions, concepts, descriptions or other forms
of representation intended to express belief,
judgment, experiences, reasons, information, or
opinion2.
Evaluation has meaning to assess the credibility
of statements or other representation which are
accounts or descriptions of a persons belief, or
opinion; and to assess the logical strength of the
actual or intended inferential relationship among
statements, descriptions, questions or other
forms of representation2.

 Inference means to identify and secure elements

needed to draw reasonable conclusions, to form
conjectures and hypothesis, to consider relevant
information and to educe the consequences
flowing from data, statements, principles,
evidence, beliefs, opinions, concepts,
descriptions, etc.
Explanation is the ability to states the results of
ones reasoning to justify that the evidential,
conceptual, methodological, criteriological, and
contextual considerations upon which ones
result were based; and to present ones
reasoning in the form of cogent arguments.

 As a good critical thinker what are you

going to do when you are facing your
communities problem?

Community problem
Keluarga Soenarta (45 tahun) mempunyai tiga
anak, yang berdomisili di Kabupaten Sukabumi,
di Desa Genteng, tempat tinggal mereka dekat
sekali dengan sumber air (sungai) dan sungai
tersebut dimanfaatkan oleh penduduk sebagai
MCK. Pada bulan Januari 2005 dua putra dari
Pak Soenarta tahu-tahu sakit tidak bisa jalan,
Ternyata tetangga Pak Soenarta, anaknya juga
terkena penyakit yang sama. Kemudian dari
petugas Kesehatan mengatakan bahwa Desa
Genteng terjadi wabah polio, yang disebabkan
oleh suatu agent.