For Paresh Das, a class 10 student of Srimaa Govt High School, the most important lesson was not how to answer faster, but when to slow down. “Earlier, I used to answer quickly. During this activity, I realised that I should think about my answer first,” he said. His new four-step rule: “Stop, think, ask and check.”That shift from instinctive response to reasoned judgement is at the heart of the AM/NS India Times Critical Thinking Championship (TCTC), which has reached 5,68,653 students across 3,562 schools in 959 cities and 26 states and Union territories.Significantly, the intervention is concentrated at an age when learning habits are still taking shape. Of all participants, 4.3 lakh – nearly three-fourths – are in classes 3 to 8. Class 3 alone accounts for 94,873 students, followed by class 6 with 71,436, class 7 with 70,000 and class 8 with 66,998. Another 90,536 students are in classes 9 and 10.UP accounts for the largest share, with 3,98,266 participants, followed by Uttarakhand at 82,138, Himachal Pradesh at 42,617 and Bihar at 41,112, with smaller cohorts spread across other states.The initiative uses interactive sessions and scenario-based questions to help students distinguish fact from opinion, identify assumptions, examine evidence and explain how they reached a conclusion. The focus is less on supplying the correct answer and more on making the reasoning behind it visible.That distinction is becoming more important in classrooms where two powerful forces coexist: an examination culture that has traditionally rewarded recall and a digital environment where search engines, social media and AI can produce answers almost instantly. Information is abundant; verification, reasoning and judgment are becoming the scarcer skills.Student responses show how that difference is being understood. “Normally I have to learn, remember. Here I have to think,” said one student from Sreema Govt High School, adding that asking questions while learning could also help in remembering subjects better.
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Another student said the sessions offered a different way of handling problems: instead of panicking, ask why the problem arose, break it down and work through possible answers. “The solution then becomes obvious,” the student said.A third response went directly to the challenge of navigating competing information. “Many times we get confused about what to believe from many versions, how to reach a conclusion,” the student said, arguing that STOP-THINK-ASK-CHECK could become a useful habit for getting closer to the truth.This is also the direction in which NEP 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2023 seek to move school learning – away from rote reproduction towards competency, application and conceptual understanding. But policy can change question papers faster than it changes classroom habits. Critical thinking requires students to be rewarded not merely for knowing, but for questioning, testing and, when necessary, revising what they think they know.In the AI era, that may become education’s harder test. Machines can increasingly generate the first answer. Students will need to know whether it deserves to be the final one.
