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Critical thinking facts

This is how they work​

Critical thinking is the step where learners test, evaluate and refine their knowledge. When we think things through, compare, or ask “what if…?”, our schemas gain two crucial advantages:

  1. Strengthening: active reasoning builds many edges at once. A fact connected in multiple directions becomes far harder to forget.
  2. Self-correction: if we misremembered something or picked up misinformation, the act of reasoning exposes the weak link. The schema reorganises itself into a stronger, more accurate shape.

This makes critical thinking a memory workout as well as a self improvement exercise.

A simple example​

  • Core fact: The Nile is a river in Africa.
  • Reinforcement fact: The Nile flows through 11 African countries, from Lake Victoria in the south all the way to Egypt in the north.
  • Enrichment fact: The Ancient Egyptians used the Nile to transport enormous stone blocks for the pyramids.
  • Anchor fact: The Egyptians worshipped the Nile as a god, because its yearly flood decided whether they would feast or starve.
  • Critical thinking fact: Were all ancient civilisations built along rivers?

Thinking this through strengthens the schema. It connects the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Yellow River.
It also challenges it: Many civilizations follow this pattern, but not all do. The Maya and Inca are important exceptions.

The schema grows broader, better connected, detailed, and more accurate.

Animation: Stabilisation through reasoning​

When we test knowledge with a critical thinking question, nodes don’t just stabilise —
new edges appear across the schema, and weak or false connections drop away.

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The good news​

Critical thinking is natural and inevitable. Our minds are set up to challenge new knowledge:

  • “Does this always work?”
  • “Does it only work in certain contexts?”
  • “What are exceptions?”
  • “Is it just wrong?”

Each time we think something through, our schemas strengthen. Even mistakes are useful, because putting them to the test exposes them and they eventually get replaced with better knowledge.

This is why critical thinking doesn’t just add facts — it upgrades the whole system.

Why this matters​

With a rich selection of questions we have gone from the mundane and boring “The Nile is a river in Africa”
to placing this knowledge into our cognitive schema and linking it with what we know about ancient civilisations.
On the journey we’ve added details about how the Egyptians built their pyramids, their religion, the importance of the flooding,
and how this compares to other cultures.

"But isn’t this a lot more information to learn?!" you might ask. Yes — and that’s the point.

This is the whole power of playing The Hundred: you build up a well-knit, robust cognitive network. And because we make the facts easy to take in, time them to the natural rhythms of memory, and deliver them in a safe, engaging context,
you don’t just learn more — you remember more.

Critical thinking doesn’t make learning harder. It makes learning deeper, stronger, and more durable.