when I first started working teaching in
the Ivy League I had very high
expectations these are the kids that are
the cream of the crop of our educational
system they get the highest GPAs the
highest SATs the most AP courses these
are the smart kids right and so I was
very excited to work with them I soon
learned and saw some things that I
didn't expect I noticed that my students
could take any test and get an a any
test I could give them they could take
it and get an A I noticed that if I gave
them instructions for the assignment
they could ace the assignment but any
time that I gave them an unstructured
assignment any time that I get you know
didn't tell them exactly what was on the
test prior to the test
they had great difficulty if I asked
them to solve a novel problem of some
kind they had really great difficulty
and I was surprised by this I wondered
to myself what were they doing for those
years in their k12 experience and what I
came to realize is what they were doing
was getting very good at doing school
they got very good at school and I was
worried that this skill wouldn't
transfer to being good at life that
those skills might not be transferable
um my kids could win at the game show
Jeopardy they were full of information
they had encyclopedic recall of facts
but they didn't have they weren't
knowledge able they didn't have an
ability with knowledge that they could
take information and structure it and do
something with it to solve a novel
problem in a word they couldn't think so
what is thinking what does it mean what
do we mean when we say thinking thinking
is simply a process of structuring
information and doing something with it
taking information structuring it
organizing it in such a way to do
something meaningful with it now there
are a number of different types of
thinking major types of thinking there's
creative thinking critical thinking
there's systems-thinking
interdisciplinary or scientific thinking
and there's also emotional intelligence
or pro-social thinking these are all
wildly important thinking skills all
students need to know them we shouldn't
discriminate among them of course our
schools don't discriminate among them
they're killing all of them equally now
this problem that that the problem of
students getting to college and not
being able to think is an educational
problem it's rooted in education but it
has global effects these global effects
are not just seen by professors in
classrooms they're seen by everyone
parents worry that their students don't
have the common sense skills to make it
in life
teachers worry that what they're doing
in the classroom isn't preparing kids
for life and businesses and CEOs when
they're interviewed they consistently
complain that the applicant pool is not
ready for the workforce of course as
citizens and voters we can see the
24-hour news cycle polls and even
presidential debates lacking in critical
analysis and thinking and who among us
hasn't wanted to at least once throttle
a customer service person for their
thoughtless automaticity this problem
starts with education but it has global
implications how many of you have played
with Legos we played with them as a kid
I played with them as a kid and when
when I got them they were in a bucket
right they came in a big bucket there
were no instructions you threw them out
on the floor and you were able to make
whatever you wanted you could make a
bridge you could make a house you could
make a pterodactyl if you wanted to well
that's not how they come today today
it's dependent on instructions they come
in a box like this a kit like this and
it's very dependent on the on the child
reading the instructions in order to
build the kit if you don't follow the
instructions you're not going to end up
with an imperial dropship with four
stormtroopers and you certainly can't
build the pterodactyl with this kit
here's my fear it's not that there's not
a lot of thinking that goes into these
kits there's a tremendous amount of
thinking that goes into these kits and
it's all happening on a desk in Billund
Denmark at Lego headquarters the people
who design these kits are making great
strides in their thinking but it's not
happening on the kids desk where the kid
is building it my fear is that this Lego
example is a metaphor for what's
happening in education today we are as
curriculum designers and teachers and
educators over engineering the content
curriculum and we're surgically removing
the thinking so that our kids are simply
following instructions painting by the
numbers and getting the grade we need to
get thinking back on every desk I'm
happy to say that the educational
conversation the conversation nationally
has moved to talking a lot about
education that's a great thing
lots of people are talking about
education everybody's got different
solutions for how to fix the education
and the best thing is we know that it's
broken the system is broken and that's a
good thing because knowing it will help
us to fix it now the most important
thing that we have to remember is that
education is not going to be fixed from
a top and trickle down approach it's
going to be fixed from a bottom and
bubble up approach there are over 60
million lessons taught every day in this
country
60 million that is where education
happens every day in those 60 million
lessons where teachers and students and
ideas come together in a triad we've got
to get thinking back into that equation
we've got to get thinking at every desk
now I travel around the country in the
world talking about the importance of
thinking and I'll tell you this I've
never really met anyone who seriously
looks me in the eye and says I don't
think thinking is that important we all
know that thinking is critically
important and yet either even a billion
dollars of research from the Gates
Foundation shows us that education in
education the way to fix education is
to teach thinking skills so what are we
doing to teach thinking skills in the
classroom in my work with classrooms and
schools and districts around the country
I see one very common strategy I call it
the bandwidth solution the idea is that
if we simply put enough information if
we increase the size of the pipe and we
ask students to learn more stuff that
somehow miraculously they will end up
being thinkers it reminds me of one of
my favorite cartoons we do this stuff
and then a miracle occurs and then of
course thinking will happen and I think
of the the Faculty of this country and
myself included as being sort of from
the future we get the kids when when
they're done with the k-12 system we get
them so in a way we come from the future
with a message and that message is the
miracle didn't happen our college
students can't think we don't need a
miracle what we need is a method we need
the ability to teach thinking through a
method in our schools alongside the
lessons there are four Universal
thinking skills that research shows are
happening and that we can use to teach
kids how to think if we teach these
skills they lead to those six types of
thinking I talked about critical
thinking creative thinking
interdisciplinary and scientific
thinking and even pro-social and
emotional development the first thing
that we can do to get kids thinking
again is to teach them to make
distinctions between ideas and objects
and things what does it mean to make a
distinction what we mean is to define
our terms but we don't just want to
define the terms we want kids to learn
to increasingly over time create more
sophisticated more nuanced distinctions
we want when a student takes something
and and makes a distinction they're
actually bringing something into
existence and in doing that we get a
deeper understanding of things
we have more clarity of thought and in
turn more clarity of communication the
second thing we can do to get think kids
thinking again is to teach them to look
at the parts and the holes that make up
systems every part is a hole and every
hole is a part that is universal it's
often said in science that there are
really fundamentally just two kinds of
scientists there's splitters and there's
lumpers splitters are the scientists who
sort of break things down into parts and
then break those parts into parts and so
on and so on and lumpers take all the
parts and they put them back together
again
what we need to do is create a new
generation of young students who are
Splunk an split and lump easily they can
construct new ideas and they can
deconstruct old ideas or existing ideas
the third thing we can do to get
thinking back into the classroom is to
recognize relationships to teach our
children to recognize relationships
between and among ideas in our schools
today we almost teach the lack of
relationships or disconnection we teach
in departments in courses in subject
areas and in disciplines and yet we know
that the world is a very interconnected
place we need to get our kids seeing
more of these connections more of these
relationships the fourth thing with it
we can do to get our kids thinking again
is to take multiple perspectives
everything looks different when you take
a new perspective and when we teach
perspective taking there are there are
things that are correlated with teaching
perspective taking that we all want
increased empathy increased compassion
increased pro-social thinking and
emotional development even things like
increased skills of negotiation and
conflict resolution and spatial
reasoning perspectives are wildly
important these four skills distinctions
systems relationships and perspectives
what I call DSR P will get kids thinking
again and they combine in lots of
different ways to create
an ecology of thoughts that are very
very complex they're actually universal
to the process of thinking and they're
universal to that process of taking
information and structuring it and
turning it into some kind of knowledge
that we can use our kids are flooded
with information we're all flooded with
information in this day and age there's
information coming at us from all
directions the number one thing we can
do for our children is give them the
tools to structure that information in
meaningful ways so that they can do
something with it and believe me if we
don't teach them to think there are
plenty of people who would be will
happily think for them I'm happy to
report that these four skills des R and
P are being taught in preschool to grad
school around the country and around the
world we're seeing remarkable effects
little kids are learning the same
thinking skills that the big kids are
learning this is my son Carter at ten
months old he is empirically cute we've
done research what he's doing actually
is uh he's organizing his Cheerios his
strawberries and his and his blueberries
and he lines them up and groups them
together then he eats them based on the
ones that he likes that particular day
and what's remarkable about this photo
is that at this time in Carter's life he
doesn't actually know the words for
blueberry strawberry or Cheerios but he
is making distinctions he's taking
perspectives and grouping things into
little sparked whole systems and making
relationships he's doing D SRP in fact
he and all of us are hard-wired to do D
SRP these are universal processes of
structuring information now as Carter
goes into our school system he will be
encouraged to begin memorizing
information and and regurgitating it he
will be encouraged to take tests he'll
be encouraged to follow instructions
and in particular he'll be encouraged
not to make any mistakes and look only
for the right answers over time he will
be discouraged from his natural talent
for thinking a talent we all are born
with now Carter is my son but someday
he'll be somebody student he'll be
somebody's employee he'll be somebody's
boss somebody's husband somebody's
father he'll be a voting citizen in our
democracy his ability to think is no
more important than any child's ability
to think I'm reminded of the global
effects of thinking every day when I
leave my house and I see this on the on
the wall of my barn as I leave the house
thinking really lies at the root of
democracies in our Declaration of
Independence it says that governments
derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed I have a
question for you what is the meaning of
that consent if the governed are not
thinking as a solution to the
educational problem getting thinking at
every desk might seem far-reaching but I
am giving hope every time I hear from a
parent that says my daughter in learning
these thinking skills has completely
changed in just six months
I'm giving great hope when I hear from
teachers who say I'm more engaged and
more excited about teaching than ever in
26 years because we're teaching thinking
skills which are going to matter for
these students I have more hope that we
can fix the problems of Education when I
see these little headstart kids learning
the same for thinking skills that
doctoral students in the Ivy League are
using that inventors experts and
scientists are using every day and
they're learning them at a young young
age it gives me great hopes that we can
fix education we can
do this but we need to get started right
away we need to get teach think teaching
thinking back at every desk thank you
very much
you