Knowledge is no substitute for thought.
Rose's new curriculum is out of date, what needs to be taught in schools is the lifelong skill of thinking
From The Times
December 12, 2008
Sir, The new Rose curriculum (report, Dec 9) is incredibly old-fashioned and out of date. The most important subject that needs to be taught is thinking — and that is completely missing.
The Atkey organisation has shown that teaching “thinking” as a distinct subject raises performance in every other subject by between 30 and 100 per cent. Teaching thinking to unemployed youngsters on the New Deal programme (Holst Group) for just five hours increased the employment rate by 500 per cent. David Lane taught this thinking at the Hungerford Guidance Centre to youngsters who were too violent to be taught in normal schools. In a 20-year follow-up he has shown that the rate of actual criminal conviction for those taught thinking was less than one tenth compared with the rate for those not taught thinking.
The Chinese Government is trying out a pilot programme teaching this thinking in five provinces. If it likes the result it may be used in 680,000 schools. There are whole countries where this thinking is mandatory in every school, such as Venezuela, and there is wide use in Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore.
This thinking has been taught to Down’s syndrome youngsters and to Nobel laureates. It has been taught to four-year-olds and 90-year-olds (Roosevelt University in Chicago).
Thinking is rather important. More and more knowledge is never a substitute for thinking skills.
Edward de Bono
EU Ambassador for Thinking, London W1
Edward De Bono’s Message
Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.
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