Teaching Thinking

Once again I am drawing from the book, "300 Writing Prompts."  Today's question is:  "If you were to teach as a career, what would you teach?"

I come from a family of educators.  My dad and several of his siblings were educators -- one of them at the college level.  My brother is in school administration after many years of teaching.  My sister taught for awhile after graduating from college.  My mother worked as a teacher's aid for many years.  I was the "black sheep" for not choosing to be an educator.  I instead went into business.

The funny thing is that as I look back over my career, I spent much of it teaching.  I educated others about products, I educated people on financial decisions, I educated employees on various aspects of their job -- products, processes, general business principals, sales, etc.  I found that to be effective in business, one must be a teacher.

Now to answer the question:  If I could figure out how to do so, I would teach people to think.

Most people want to follow a recipe.  Reasoning out a process, or making a decision seems to be difficult for many.  They are dependent on someone else to do those things for them.  To some extent, I blame our education system for that mindset.  I don't think kids are taught to think for themselves.

Part of the reason for the failure to teach this most fundamental of skills lies in the foundations of our educational system.  It arose in order to train future workers with the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic so they could fill factory jobs.  Additional skills were taught through apprenticeships which were specific to their function as an employee.  Only at the college level were basic thinking skills emphasized and even that emphasis has faded over time.

The focus was on learning to behave in certain ways.  Children are taught "facts" which they are expected to regurgitate on a test.  They are not taught to reason through a scenario and determine probable or, desired outcomes.  They are taught to repeat what they have been told, or to follow a recipe with known outcome.

Over multiple generations the problem has become entrenched very deeply because those now doing the teaching were taught using those very principles.  How can one be expected to teach thinking skills when they were never taught thinking skills?

History is a subject that I found to be very dry and boring when in school.  It seemed to be merely about memorizing dates of events.  Today I find history to be interesting.  Instead of merely learning that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, triggered World War I, I would ask the question, "How did the assassination of Franz Ferdinand lead to the outbreak of World War I and is there a connection to the events that led to the War in Bosnia in 1992?  How do those events affect the political landscape of Eastern Europe today?"

Some would argue that I am asking graduate school level questions of children who need first to master basic facts.  The problem is that children need to understand why they are asked to learn those facts, otherwise they become disenchanted and fall into the trap of "studying for the test" and not for the knowledge.  When we see the importance of something we remember it for long periods and integrate it into our thought processes.  When we deem something as relevant only for the moment, we quickly forget it.  We need to teach that there is purpose in learning.  The purpose is not merely to receive a certificate that we consider our "ticket" to a job, it serves the purpose of creating an understanding that can lead to advancement of the human race.

Thinking is about "connecting dots."  There is an interconnectedness within and between almost every event that occurs.  The earth and all that is in it is one giant integrated organism in many ways.  This includes human events through time.  Until we begin to understand that interconnectedness, we merely pass through events that swirl around us.  Thinking gives us the ability to thoughtfully affect our surroundings -- hopefully in a positive way.