Revolutionary Minds: The Educational Vision of J. Krishnamurti and Its Practice by Paul Herder

Author:Paul Herder [Herder, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Classification as a Thinking Skill

Classification is a foundational cognitive process that brings great practical and intellectual benefits. The same process, however, is also behind the many destructive social and interpersonal divisions that characterize human conflict throughout the world. Fully cognizant of the dangers of thought and the categorizing brain, Krishnamurti insisted education encompass an understanding of the “psychological structure of human beings”, an understanding that clearly involves the role of classification – or as Krishnamurti often called it; labeling. In a classroom setting, the study of classification should be comprehensive, meaning it should not be restricted primarily to its useful or destructive capabilities – but cover both. Constuctivist pedagogy recognizes the importance of classification, but only in its positive applications. Krishnamurti, on the other hand, rarely mentioned the benefits of classification. He put the lion's share of emphasis on its destructive powers. Within an academic context, a comprehensive approach to this vital cognitive function can be seen as encompassing its positive as well as its negative consequences. In Constructivist pedagogy, classification is called (or classified as) a “thinking skill”. Thinking skills are teaching strategies that highlight a universal cognitive process, for example, classification, comparison, prediction, ranking, or generalization. Each thinking process is broken down into several sequential steps. Students apply these steps to course material as a way to think through that material in a structured way. Fundamentally, thinking skills are a means for the student to consciously apply cognitive processes to school work, processes that normally work automatically and with little or no awareness. From the perspective of Krishnamurti education, getting students to work through academic content using thinking skills helps them become more aware of these particular processes – and by implication – thinking itself. Once the door to thinking has been opened, that awareness can be deepened and extended to all dimensions of living, including relationships.

With all thinking skills, including classification, students are introduced to a psychological process in an way that enhances academic study. In other words, through that processes' practical classroom application, students gain awareness of its presence in the thinking they use everyday at school. The idea of classifying, or grouping things, is easy for students of all ages to grasp (it is innate after all) and can be introduced in a few minutes. It is best to introduce classification using authentic examples with which students are already familiar. For example, all computer software involves an array of classification for the organization and storage of information. It also provides users with the ability to create files in order to store and share those documents. That is, it affords users the means to create their own categories (for maximum authenticity the same idea can be applied to an iPod). Computer files can therefore be a basis for drawing analogies to the way we classify objects in other contexts.

Constructivist lessons that use classification (or any thinking skill) are designed to infuse student thinking into course material. What this means is that when students actively classify objects

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