Read the following statements and choose the correct option : Assertion (A) :…
2023
Read the following statements and choose the correct option :
Assertion (A) : Reading and writing skills help in critical thinking at the primary level.
Reason (R) : Critical thinking is a sub-skill of reading and writing.
- A.
Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
- B.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
- C.
(A) is false, but (R) is true.
- D.
(A) is true, but (R) is false.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
In an Assertion-Reason item, the Assertion and the Reason are each checked for their own truth first, before checking whether the Reason explains the Assertion. Reading and writing are literacy skills - tools for decoding, comprehending, and producing text - while critical thinking is a higher-order cognitive skill involving analysis, evaluation, and judgment that is exercised across all subjects and everyday situations, not only within literacy tasks.
Applying this here: primary-level literacy activities such as interpreting a passage, drawing inferences, comparing viewpoints, and constructing a written response give young learners concrete material through which their analytical and evaluative thinking develops, so the Assertion holds. The Reason, however, claims that critical thinking is a sub-skill contained within reading and writing. Since critical thinking is also exercised through mathematical reasoning, scientific inquiry, social interaction, and everyday problem-solving - well beyond literacy tasks - it cannot be treated as a subset of reading and writing skills, so the Reason does not hold as stated.
A combination that treats both statements as true and lets the Reason explain the Assertion still needs critical thinking to be confined within literacy skills, which does not match how the skill actually functions across subjects.
A combination that treats both as true without the Reason explaining the Assertion carries the same problem - it still accepts the Reason's confinement of critical thinking to literacy.
A combination that treats the Assertion as false denies that literacy work builds analytical thinking at the primary level, understating how comprehension and inference tasks function in the classroom.
So the Assertion is true - reading and writing help build critical thinking at the primary level - while the Reason is false, since critical thinking is a broader cognitive skill and not a sub-skill confined to reading and writing.