Harnessing the Pedagogy of Critical and Creative Thinking for Nation-Building

Résumé

Although critical and creative thinking are complementary, rather than orthogonal, the results of most researches reveal more of the efforts to compare the respective benefits of each of these thinking methods, rather than focus on the combined benefits of both. In this work, adopting a synthetic, analytic and critical methodology, I set out to explore the synergy that exists between these two forms of thinking, using some instances in the history of philosophy to show how that synergy can also be deployed for nation-building. Using Nigeria, as a hypothetical case, this work argues that we can do better than we are currently doing, if the skills and values of critical and creative thinking are emphasized in our National Policy on Education, put into use by teachers, and allowed to guide our decision-making processes, in different areas of national life.