Denja Abdullahi’s Death and the king’s grey hair and its implications for critical thinking and development

Abstract

When we read a text, something takes place between us and that text. This phenomenon has been investigated and analyzed by Ashcroft in his Constitutive Theory. However, it is not enough to know what happens between the text and the reader: the question is:what do we do with that which happens between the text and the reader. Most readers and scholars alike take it for granted that reading cultivates critical thinking, which itself is the key to familiarization with problems and driver for the need for solutions. Dewey argues in his philosophy of Instrumentalism that human thoughts are active in that they move towards objects; therefore, they should be consciously directed towards solving problems. The method of approach to the study was based on Bobkina and Stefanova’s four-stage model of using fiction to teach critical thinking. It was concluded that the human mind or brain uses the simulation effect as in computers to orientate itself to social realities as reflected in literary texts and that as a result literary texts were most effect in cultivating critical thinking skills in us.