Think!: Before It's Too Late by Edward De Bono

Author:Edward De Bono
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Personal Growth - General, General, Popular Psychology, Problem solving, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Creative thinking
ISBN: 9780091924096
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2010-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

8 Schools

Schools in the European Union spend 25 per cent of their teaching time on mathematics. But most people only use about 3 per cent of the mathematics they learn at school. I have never consciously used the geometry, algebra, trigonometry, differential calculus or integral calculus I learned at school.

So why do we spend this rather high portion of school time on the more advanced 97 per cent of mathematics?

Because a student may want to enter a profession that does require this grounding in mathematics.

If you wanted to be a rocket scientist, you could learn the necessary mathematics as part of that course. This applies to many professional choices. There is no need for everyone else to learn so much mathematics.

Because it trains the mind.

I am not aware of any evidence that shows that those who studied more mathematics, or were better at it, have superior minds compared with those who studied less. It may indeed have some effect, but if the intention was to train the mind, then there are many much more powerful things we could do to train the mind and to train thinking. There are aspects of my thinking that have been shown to have a powerful effect, increasing performance in every subject by between 30 and 100 per cent; improving employment chances by 500 per cent; reducing violence by 90 per cent. Can anyone claim such results for mathematics?

Because some mathematics is needed so more mathematics must be better.

The tradition has been established and is continued and defended.

Because it is necessary to fill the time allocated to 'baby-sitting' in education.

Youngsters need to be occupied. Mathematics, like many other subjects, simply fills their time.

I am certainly not against teaching mathematics, but if education claims not to have the time to teach other subjects, such as thinking, then the amount of time spent on mathematics could be reduced.

There is also another aspect. Students who are not good at mathematics may leave school feeling they are stupid. Their self-esteem is very low, and this affects both their future lives and their contribution to society.

THINKING

Teaching thinking should be the key subject in education. Nothing is more important than thinking – for personal life, for professional life and for contributions to society.

To claim that schools already teach thinking as part of teaching other subjects like history and science is a very weak argument. To be sure, some thinking is taught, but it is mainly of the analytical type.

There is a real need to teach broad operational thinking skills. There is a need to teach perceptual thinking – which is extremely important and will be considered later. There is a need to teach genuine exploratory thinking – not argument. There is a need to teach value thinking. There is a need to teach action thinking. There is a need to teach creative thinking.

John Edwards, a research teacher in Australia, reduced the amount of time at school devoted to science, and taught some thinking in that time. In the science examinations those

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.