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I think I had an incredible moment of thinking out loud when I made a particularly ignorant and unfounded comment in class today about private education fostering more independent thinking. First of all, having attended private learning institutions for most of my life, I not only have a one-sided view of my claim but I know from first-hand experience that independent thinking is a value in theory but not in practice. I recall being taught to be a critical or skeptical thinker, but is this is not the same as independent. Second, my claim that my ability to think more independently at Bryn Mawr is due to the fact that I'm paying for it is also untrue, as I'm mostly here with the help of financial aid.

I don't think there are any institutions that foster or teach independent thinking; I think that other individuals (i.e. other independent thinkers) teach it. I'm not entirely sure it's something that can be taught; I think all humans are born as independent thinkers and that ability is either nurtured or suppressed, either taking root by adolescence or becoming extremely buried, like the human capacity for language.

I don't think more independent thinkers exist in any particular place, but I do think that they tend to find each other. As Ann Carson might say, they recognize each other "like italics." Do I consider myself an independent thinker? I guess so. Sometimes. I certainly gravitated towards a few independent thinkers as friends and definitely "prefer that story" of myself. In trying to recall people who nurtured my independent thinker, I'm able to list quite few, though I think they would call it "creativity" instead of "independent thinking."

All this has brought me to wonder what exactly independent thinking is. It's definitely not the same as critical thinking. Is it simply thinking for yourself? (Though "simply" isn't really a word I should be throwing around here). Is it being conscious of the decisions we do and don't make for ourselves?

So I did some google searching...

http://www.rit.org/

http://www.ndt-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Independent_Thinking.htm