Education
Let us Start Teaching Children How to Think
I spent the majority of my childhood going to church every weekend. My mother was heavily involved in the church and enjoyed teaching the children. She would often deal with the younger children, and I was shipped off to learn from the other teachers for the older class.
As a child, I did not understand the difference between knowing how and what to think. But in this church, the adults spent all their time teaching us what to think. And it makes sense because they would not want us asking difficult questions that could potentially hinder our faith in God.
It was not until I turned eighteen that I learned the damage of being taught what to think. I went on my journey to discover my faith and learned things I did not want to. It took me a year to accept that I did not believe what I learned when I was young.
It was a long and tiresome journey, and I had to accept that the small church I loved dearly was part of a cult. When I tried explaining my beliefs to my friends, they were closed to learning anything.
They spent much of their time making claims that were not factual. And many of them told me I had been deceived. My pursuit to learn how to think led me to become an outcast.
The damage of not knowing how to think is permanent. As someone unaware I was in a cult, I could see why teaching people what to think was advantageous. It stops people from questioning things and thinking outside the box.
Although the education system is nothing like a cult, it has some blockers when teaching children how to think. If we want a future generation that can produce good ideas and eradicate bad ones, we need to teach them how to think.
The Danger of Teaching What to Think
I quickly learned that my friends who grew up with me in this cult would be in it forever. By teaching people what to think, we close the doors to curiosity and self-discovery. Instead of allowing people to derive truths, they spend all their time trying to confirm their own.
Our cognitive biases already do a good enough job of this. We are constantly blocking out things that do not fit with our truths and accepting things that do. In the happiness hypothesis, the author describes how he believed that all his roommates did not help him around the house.
He explained that his only job was to keep the fridge clean, and everyone else had their jobs too. Despite everyone having their jobs, he found that the house was always messy. And he truly believed that he was cleaning up after others and the only one doing his job.
But, he soon realised he was wrong. After having a sit down with his roommates, he learned that he was messy. They showed him pictures where he had left things on the side, and they even showed him the fridge he believed he was cleaning so well.
He spent so much time confirming that he was the only clean one, he missed his errors. And it is indeed easy to spot the speck in someone else’s eye, but not the log in our eye. Due to knowing what to think, our brains are constantly trying to find things that confirm that.
However, this leaves us blind and dims our ability to see the full picture. When we tell children facts without justifying them, we are doing the same. It is time we began not just teaching children what to think. We must let them know how we got to find their own conclusions.
The Faults of Education on This Matter
I recently watched a clip from Neil De Grasse Tyson. He was talking about the problem the education system has with punishing good thought processes. He gave the example of two children trying to spell the word cat. One child spelt it k-a-t and the other b-f-g. He pointed out that too often than not, those two things get marked equally wrong.
By marking these two things equally wrong, we punish good thinking. And the process of a child’s thinking is more important than getting the answer right. Why do I say that? When the child is of age, they will soon find out that the world is not as black and white as they thought.
There are many gaps and things we still need to find out. There are even different ways we can approach a problem to get to a good solution. The world needs many ways of thinking, and all play a part in finding a good solution.
So, it is better to have people who know how to think. These are often the people who go on to solve problems and make the world a better place.
Teaching Students How to Think
The first thing teachers can do is start being open about their thought process. No matter what subject you are teaching, you can present your journey of thought to your children. If you are explaining why leaves are green, you can take them through your step-by-step understanding.
It may be longer to teach, but the children get an understanding of your thinking. For my thought process, I like to use this model below: Observe, Question, Research, Validate.
Observe: What have you spotted in the universe that makes you curious
Question: What would you like to find out about that thing?
Research: Go on your journey to finding it out. Did you use google? Did you ask a specialist?
Validate: Ask someone else who is knowledgeable to ensure the information is correct.
By using this model, students have a clear understanding of how I think. By doing this, you encourage them to question your thinking processes and develop their way of thinking.
Secondly, I would encourage teaching coding or programming. There are loads of cheap and fun interactive kits children can use to learn how to code. During my Engineering degree, I found that teaching something to think forced me to learn how to think.
I had to think of what I would want the robots next step to be and why. This encourages critical thought but provides your students with a good skill that will be beneficial in the future.
Closing Thought
Now, more than ever, we need a society that knows how to think. Our capabilities are ever-growing thanks to technology, but we need people who can manage the increasing power. Plus, we are now learning that what we think about the universe may be wrong as we discover more of it.
So, the power is not in what you think but how you think. And society needs more people who can operate in a world that is grey. Not black and white.
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