Teaching Teachers to Teach Thinking

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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on April 9, 2011 at 9:17

There's a guy on this website called Graeme Allan who will almost certainly leap upon this soon and do what you ask.

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Permalink Reply by Oriana SeastoneStern on April 11, 2011 at 4:56

Hi Kaunas,

 

No I haven't been trained. I've read Think Before It's Too Late and watched his videos on the Six Hats. I come from a teaching background. Most of the kids are English Language Learners, which only adds to the difficulty of having them think in English. In their formal school they're taught with rote learning. The idea is that I would love for them to think, to ask why, to question the answer, and to come up with wild answers. They, at this point in time, don't understand how to do that for the most part. There are activities I can do with them from the book using PMI, provocation, concept fan, but am unsure how to begin. I know that would only be a small part of thinking, but I thought it might be a start.

 

Thanks!

Oriana

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Permalink Reply by Franis on July 13, 2011 at 9:52

Obviously, most of education now is training kids to get the right answer by reading the mind of the teachers or authors. This prepares them to read the minds of their bosses. This ability makes you a "good worker," but gives no advantage in thinking for yourself. No wonder kids dispense with thinking and use Google to find and copy the facts. That's what the current system of " teaching to the test" is asking for!

Let Graeme help you... and check out his blog: http://newmillenniumthinking.blogspot.com/ Although the mindmap . pdf is cool and demonstrates an outline of why people should learn thinking skills, Graeme's writing on the blog is specific enough to help more with what you have asked. Search "Getting Started,"

My absolute first exposure to creative thinking came when some guest teacher arrived in my second grade class. He drew two circles that looked like an eight on the chalkboard, and asked the class, "What's half of this?" We all said "4." Then he erased one half of the 8 vertically - and there was a 3. Our teacher obviously thought this guy was great, and we were left completely puzzled and feeling tricked.
So make sure when the teachers are presenting this material that the kids know the rules have changed. At seven, I was incredibly "ripe" for being able to be creative - but this honored guest teacher only taunted us so we'd give him the "wrong" answers instead of teaching us anything.

For entertainment, you might tell stories about how examining assumptions worked to solve problems to introduce the effectiveness of creative solutions. There are some of these puzzle lateral thinking stories...
http://www.folj.com/bb/index.php

Also, the history of inventions are another source of interesting stories that might keep a bunch of teacher's interest.
Then there is brain science & perception games, (that demonstrate the limitations of our senses and mind) These back up many of the thinking tools that de Bono invented.

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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on July 15, 2011 at 6:52

Hi Luis,

I'm cross-posting this passage from de Bono's newly revamped personal website. It's a simple and valuable summary of the foundations of the Western thinking system. We can see from this how the need for Edward's methods arose:

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from edwarddebono.com:

Argument and Critical Thinking

To this day, Western culture depends on this type of thinking. In family arguments, in business discussions, in the law courts, and in governing assemblies, we use the thinking system of the Greeks, based on argument and critical thinking.

I sometimes refer to prominent philosophers of this day as the “gang of three.” Who were the famous Greek gang of three, and how did they form the thinking habits of Western culture?


The Gang of Three

Socrates (469–399 B.C.)

Socrates was trained as a “sophist.” Sophists were people who played with words and showed how careful choice of words could lead you to almost any conclusion you wanted.

Socrates was interested in challenging people’s thinking and, indeed, getting them to think at all instead of just taking things for granted. He wanted people to examine what they meant when they said something. He was not concerned with building things up or making things happen.

From Socrates we get the great emphasis on argument and critical thinking. Socrates chose to make argument the main thinking tool. Within argument, there was to be critical thinking: Why do you say that? What do you mean by that?

Plato (c. 427–348 B.C.)

Plato is generally held to be the father of Western philosophy. He is best-known for his famous analogy of the cave. Suppose someone is bound up so that the person cannot turn around but can only look at the back wall of the cave. There is a fire at the mouth of the cave. If someone comes into the cave, then the bound person cannot see the newcomer directly but can only see the shadow cast by the fire on the back wall of the cave. So as we go through life, we cannot see truth and reality but only “shadows” of these. If we try hard enough and listen to philosophers, then perhaps we can get a glimpse of the truth. From Plato we get the notion that there is the “truth” somewhere but that we have to search for it to find it. The way to search for the truth is to use critical thinking to attack what is untrue.

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)

Aristotle was the pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle was a very practical person.

He developed the notion of “categories,” which are really definitions. So you might have a definition of a “chair” or a “table.” When you come across a piece of furniture, you have to judge whether that piece of furniture fits the definition of a chair. If it does fit, you say it is a chair.

The object cannot both be a chair and not be a chair at thesame time. That would be a “contradiction.”

On the basis of his categories and the avoidance of contradiction, Aristotle developed the sort of logic we still use today (based largely on “is” and “is not”). From Aristotle we get a type of logic based on identity and non-identity, on inclusion and exclusion.


The Outcome of the Gang of Three

So this was the gang of three. The outcome was a thinking system based on the search for the “truth.” This search was going to be carried out by the method of argument. Within argument there was to be the critical thinking that sought to attack “untruth.” This attack was going to use the methodology of Aristotle’s logic.


The Pervasiveness of Argument

To this day, argument is the basis of our normal thinking. The purest form of this type of thinking is in the law courts where the prosecution takes one side of the argument and the defense the other side. Each strives to prove the other side wrong. The “truth” is to be reached by argument.


The Inadequacy of Argument

There is a place for argument, and argument is a useful tool of thinking. But argument is inadequate as the main tool of thinking.

Argument lacks constructive energies, design energies, and creative energies. Pointing out faults may lead to some improvement but does not construct something new.

Synthesizing both points of view does not produce a stream of new alternatives.

Today in business, as elsewhere, there is a huge need to be constructive and creative. There is a need to solve problems and to open up opportunities. There is a need to design new possibilities, not just to argue between two existing possibilities.

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Permalink Reply by Franis on July 16, 2011 at 23:58

I don't see anything wrong with posting quotes from another de Bono website here.
Does anyone else?

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Permalink Reply by Kim Jones on July 17, 2011 at 1:18

Luis

you can always buy the de Bono Code book. The website is great for quick reference, but the book has a much more detailed set of descriptions and explanations of each code entry, plus a lot of interesting theoretic/practical stuff on the use of code languages generally.

Published by Viking in 2000 it has a hardback ISBN of: 0-670-88848-6 and a Trade paperback ISBN of: 0-670-88849-4

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