youwere right —added 2 paras
How do we get good at making a judgment? Judgments are a kind of prediction of course. When a judge sentences a criminal he is, in a sense, making a prediction about what will happen in the rest of this person's life. But he is also making decision that is no way a prediction, but simply serves as punishment. Similarly we when we decide that a certain restaurant is our favorite one, we are predicting something about how much we will enjoy future experiences but we are also making a decision that may or may not matter to others, that is recommendation. Recommendations are also predictions, but they have different feel. When a boss decides who to promote he is predicting something about what will become for their employees but again, the prediction isn't the key point. A judgment is a decision that has some import.
Nevertheless as different as judgments and predictions may or may not be -- the process of teaching them is identical. Good judgment is learned by making judgments and analyzing the results or truth of those judgments as more information becomes available. These too are cases and stories and these too can only be learned by making simple judgments and getting smarter about the process over time on the basis of experience.
Judgments can be made in two ways that matter here. Either someone can decide to do one thing versus another thing based on ethical, moral, avaricious, or emotional grounds, and for many other reasons. Judgments aren't so different from decisions in this aspect. Teaching someone to make a judgment of this sort, between A and B, can be done by putting students in situations in which such judgments need to be made and then going over with them how they decided and what they may have left out of their thinking.
A different kind of judgment is made when one judges the behavior of others. Judges do this course, as do compliance officers in companies, and teachers with respect to student mistakes. Children normally who make judgment about the behavior of their parents and friends as well. In all these cases judgment is best taught by having a student watch the behavior of others, keeping himself out of the issue and seeing what factors motivated and determined the behavior of the actors. It is a lot easier to teach proper behaviors when it is not one's own behavior that is being judged. One can learn to act by judging how others act.
roger schank