Are We Forgetting How to Think?

It feels as though as more time passes, we’re drifting further into an age where true independent thinking is quietly fading away. It’s not that we’ve lost intelligence or the capacity to think, at least, not yet. It’s that the systems surrounding us, shaping both adult and children’s lives, continue to and are increasingly more so rewarding compliance and reproduction of information over genuine inquiry and critical thought.

It’s something that’s played on my mind for a while, shaped by both professional and personal experiences. My exposure to the school system had been limited until recently, but after spending more time interacting with it, I’ve seen some glaring holes in how education and learning are approached. It leaves both huge room for improvement but also plenty of concern if we fail to pay closer attention to the future, we’re on the path to creating.

The Education of Obedience

Nowhere is this more visible than in education, the very place we’re supposed to learn how to think.

The modern education system, at least in the UK and much of the Western world, has become highly efficient at one primary goal: teaching students to pass exams. I don’t think this is a novel insight as I sense this has been the case for a while. Even when I was at school, the focus was heavily on exam results, though there was still some room for critical questioning and exploration. I’m not sure that space still exists though and if it does, it’s shrinking fast.

Curriculums are designed less around exploring ideas and more around achieving outcomes, more specifically, maintaining school rankings and GCSE statistics. Teachers face immense pressure to satisfy assessment criteria, leaving little time to nurture curiosity or individual thinking. Even those who want to teach differently find themselves bound by the system’s metrics and constraints.

The cost of this approach is considerable and growing more over time. We’re teaching children how to produce the right answers but not how to ask the right questions. And for those who struggle within this rigid structure, the issue is compounded. Schools risk constructing the walls that quietly guide struggling students out of the system altogether, often through flawed behavioural policies or a lack of attentiveness to learning and attention challenges.

Curiosity, doubt, questioning, and understanding. These are the raw materials for deep, critical thinking, yet are now seen as distractions rather than traits to encourage.

The result? We risk raising generations capable of reproducing information but unable to reason, critique, or challenge the assumptions behind it.

The Echo Chamber of Influence

This isn’t confined to schools, nor am I trying to place all the blame at their feet. Even as adults, the ability to think independently feels increasingly like it’s becoming the exception rather than the norm.

I rarely interact on social media these days, but a quick scroll on almost any platform reveals the same pattern. For any hot topic you’ll find opinions recycled almost verbatim from influencers, political commentators, or pseudo–thought leaders. If that sounds exaggerated, pick a trending topic, type it into X, TikTok, or Instagram, and within seconds you’ll find almost identical talking points echoed across numerous accounts. Often they’re delivered with absolute conviction by people with no particular background in the subject, or at least they didn’t have until the topic appeared in the 24 hour news cycle.

The chase for metrics of popularity and relevance i.e. likes, follows and views have led us to mistaking amplification for understanding. Many people can no longer articulate why they hold a view; they simply repeat, repost or forward what someone else said first.

Critical, independent thinking requires friction, a willingness to slow down, to test ideas, to examine multiple perspectives before forming a view. It requires the humility to change your mind when new information arises. But friction and taking time to consider a topic doesn’t trend, certainty does. In a world where today’s topic is forgotten tomorrow, it’s more fashionable to say something than to stop and think it through.

A.I. and Artificial Thinking

The rise of AI should, in theory, represent a revolution in knowledge and productivity. I, for one am firmly in the camp that believes it will. Yet as its use spreads, it’s also exposing how many of us have already forgotten how to think in the first place.

A divide is becoming clearer by the day. Those with sharpened minds, who are skilled, curious, and experienced in their domains are leveraging AI as a sparring partner to challenge, test, and refine ideas. They use it to accelerate creation, not replace cognition. Suddenly moving from ideation to creation can happen faster, and more efficiently.

On the other side are those who treat it like a vending machine and a cheap one at that. They insert vague prompts, with ideas they’ve yet to think through and take whatever comes out the other end. No review, no validation, sometimes no ability to validate because they’re creating outside of their domain anyway.

Slop in equals slop out. I think it was on This Week in Start Ups I heard the usage of AI slop first, but its sticky and I like it as its pretty fitting (yes, I realise I just said I stole an idea – irony not lost!)

It’s not that A.I in of itself is creating lazy thinkers. Instead, its amplifying the laziness and bad habits that already exist.

Are We at Risk of a Deepening Divide?

A question to ponder over is whether we’re creating a growing divide between those who can harness the power of their mind and those who offload that power to others be it that humans or artificial replacements.

It seems naïve to think the flaws in our education system, coupled with the intellectual complacency spreading through society, won’t shape the professional and social landscape in the decades to come. Those who can think critically will continue to rise, whilst those who can’t are likely drift towards obscurity through dependence on tools and others to think for them.

Are we setting up the next generation merely to function within the system rather than to question or improve it? And when they do challenge it, will it be through genuine critique or simply regurgitated slop sourced from the internet or their preferred AI tool?

To comply but not create.
To perform but not to ponder.
Is that really a future we want to create?

Teaching how to think, through logic, philosophy, and reason should be the cornerstone of education and the foundation of a healthy, functioning society. Instead, it’s become a niche pursuit reserved for those willing to invest curiosity and time into expanding their minds.

Thinking as a Skill Worth Reclaiming

Deep, critical, independent thinking takes work. It requires focus, patience, and the willingness to be challenged. It demands that we engage with complexity rather than escape from it. This isn’t Idiocracy and I’d hope none of us want a future that even remotely resembles it.

If there’s one shift, we should all advocate for in schools, workplaces, and our daily lives, it’s the rediscovery of curiosity and critical thought. We should reward questioning rather than conformity and encourage challenge rather than compliance.

My concern if we continue down the current path, we’re on is that we risk a future where we’re surrounded by information yet starved of understanding. A world where thinking becomes a niche skill, practised only by those who chose to preserve it.

We all ultimately have a choice, both for us and what we want help develop in the next generation. Either. to think deeply, to question honestly, and to resist the comfort of borrowed certainty or offload our thought to someone or something else.

The mind, like any muscle, atrophies without use. The future, I sense will belong not to those who memorise answers, but to those who keep asking better questions.