Think!

by Edward de Bono

  Design brings in aspects of action, practicality and value.

  You can analyse the past but you have to design the future – or else you will just fall into it.

  THE SIX VALUE MEDALS

  Universities and all educational institutions completely ignore value. It is assumed that everyone knows about current values and that this will therefore guide their thinking, behaviour and designs.

  A very important operation is to be able to extract 'value' at every point. What is the value here? For whom is there a value?

  The value may indeed be hidden in a lot of negatives, but you need to identify that value.

  In the end creativity has to show value. Being different for the sake of being different is not creativity.

  Values may seem intangible, but they do need more direct attention.

  In my book The Six Value Medals, I look at six different types of value:

  Gold Medal: Human values – the things that matter directly to people, both positive and negative: praise, achievement, humiliation, and so on.

  Silver Medal: Organisational values – whether the organisation is a corporation or a family unit. This involves the purpose and mission of that organisation. How do the values help or impede that purpose?

  Steel Medal: These are the quality values. Whatever something is supposed to be doing, how well is it being done? Steel has certain quality requirements.

  Glass Medal: Glass is a simple substance, but with creativity much can be done with it. So the Glass Medal is concerned with innovation and creativity. What is new?

  Wood Medal: Ecology values. This is ecology in its broadest sense and not just nature. It includes the impact of any action on the world around.

  Brass Medal: Brass looks like gold but is not. This medal is concerned with perceptual values. How will something be perceived? Something worthwhile might be perceived badly. Something less worthwhile might be perceived more favourably. We may wish it otherwise but we need to pay attention to perceptual values.

  The book includes methods of carrying out and displaying the results of a 'value scan' so that people can compare their own subjective scans and focus on the points of disagreement.

  Universities should look at teaching values.

  It is also important to identify under what circumstances the values would be present. How durable would these values be?

  In the end, 'value' is the currency of creativity. If creativity does not deliver value it is a pointless exercise.

  ARGUMENT

  Universities are much concerned with argument as a way of arriving at the truth. This goes back to medieval days, when verbal disputes were used especially in matters of theology.

  While argument has a value, there is also a genuine need to understand the other point of view and to seek reconciliation. There is a need to design a way forward rather than just to win an argument. What are the values, perceptions and fears of the other party?

  With theology, constructive thinking probably suggested compromise, but in other matters, constructive thinking is a powerful way forward.

  EXAMINATIONS

  I used to examine for the medical finals at Cambridge University. About 10 per cent of the candidates were so poor you wondered how they had ever got so far and whether they could ever become doctors. Eighty-five per cent were competent and grey. They had the right answers but nothing more. Only about 5 per cent showed some spark of originality or even thinking. Perhaps that is the nature of medicine as a subject – competence is all.

  Examinations are good for testing whether someone knows what he or she is supposed to know. They are even more useful for getting people to study.

  I asked students where they picked up their knowledge. They told me that seeing patients in a hospital ward was motivating but that very little could be learned because the variety of different cases was necessarily limited. They said they went to lectures to know the 'bandwidth' of the knowledge they were expected to have. They said they got almost all the required knowledge from books. So maybe the role of the university was just to recommend the right books.

  Possibly, instead of formal exams there could be random micro-exams. A computer screen would ask for a particular student, who would be given simple questions to answer there and then. The results of these micro-exams would then be put together to create a final mark. This would test thinking and knowledge in a different way.

  The game

  Over time, and for good reasons, an academic 'game' has developed. You are supposed to play that game. A very eminent scientist once asked me why I did not have lists of references in my books. I replied that it was because the ideas were mine and not obtained through scholarly research into other people's work. He told me that nevertheless I should 'fake' a reference list, whether or not I had read the works, because this was what was expected – this was 'the academic game'.

  SKILLS

  I have mentioned earlier that the main role of universities in the future might be to teach skills. These skills might include:

  Information skills: How to get needed information from various sources, including digital sources, books and university staff.

  Thinking skills: How to think critically, creatively, constructively and in a design mode.

  People skills: Dealing with people, managing people, understanding people.

  Professional skills: Skills relating to the chosen profession.

  SUMMARY: UNIVERSITIES

  I was once invited to speak at the World University Presidents' Summit held in Bangkok. I told the audience that in a digital age, universities were out of date.

  The original purpose of a university was to bring the knowledge and information of the past and make it available to the students of today. In a digital age it is possible to get all the information you want without going to university. With the development of a new profession of 'information provider', you will simply contract with the provider to get you the needed information. Today, universities should be concentrating on thinking skills, design skills, people skills, and so on.

  Universities are excellently placed to do wonderful things for society. They just need to have the will to do them.

  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, su
ch 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 students who had been taught some thinking did better than those students who had spent more time on science. He also showed that teaching thinking doubled the number of students getting to the top level in mathematics. Another report, from India, showed that teaching thinking greatly improved performance in mathematics.

  Thinking needs to be taught explicitly as a separate subject. Youngsters who may not be good at other subjects suddenly find they are good thinkers, and their self-esteem rises with powerful effect.

  I have had many reports from teachers along the following lines: 'I thought Suzy was not very bright because she did not perform well. But in the thinking lessons she blossomed, to the surprise of myself and all the other students.' I have had reports from China about students who suddenly found that they were expected to think instead of just learning what they were supposed to learn. They found this a liberating experience.

  I am concerned with constructive thinking, which is why in the days of the Soviet Union and in Communist Bulgaria there was a lot of interest in my work. In my experience Communist regimes were not at all against thinking and new ideas. This is also the case in China today where the government is trying out pilot projects with my work in five provinces.

  On one occasion in the Soviet Union I was asked to teach in School 36 in Moscow. At first the students were very quiet, but gradually they realised they were allowed to have ideas, and the noise level rose and rose.

  In Bulgaria I was told the story of a young girl from Plovdiv (the second largest town in Bulgaria). She was asked if she used the thinking lessons in her daily life. She answered: 'I use these things all the time in my daily life. I even use them outside life – in school.'

  Just that one sentence summarises the need to teach thinking in schools.

  Research on thinking in schools

  Denise Inwood of the Atkey organisation has done extensive research on the teaching of these methods in schools in the United Kingdom. Susan Mackie of the de Bono Institute in Melbourne, Australia, has also done a lot of work with schools. Tom Farrell of the de Bono Foundation in Dublin is also involved.

  The evidence is clear. Teaching thinking explicitly as a separate subject improves performance in every other subject by between 30 and 100 per cent.

  Many years ago there was some research done by the Schools Council in the UK. It claimed to show that teaching this thinking did not increase the number of ideas produced.

  For this research, one group of pupils was taught my PMI technique, and another group was simply told by the teacher to come up with as many ideas as possible. There was no difference between the groups' results. The conclusion was drawn from this.

  In my opinion, that is poor research. First of all, the PMI is not a creative technique at all. It simply asks the student to consider the Plus, Minus and Interesting points about a matter. It is for perceptual clarification, not creative thinking. Because there are other techniques of mine that are designed to be creative, it was incorrectly assumed that the PMI was also creative.

  It was also shown that the group just coming up with ideas had more irrelevant ideas than the PMI group. So although the overall number of ideas was similar, one lot included many irrelevant ideas.

  I believe this research is highly dangerous because it may have discouraged many educators from trying my methods for themselves. Helen Hyde of the Watford Grammar School for Girls has, however, used the methods extensively with very positive results.

  In Venezuela, every child in every school learns my methods. This was the result of the work of Luis Alberto Machado, who was originally a professor of philosophy at the University of Caracas. He read my book The Mechanism of Mind and later joined the Copei party, which was in government. He requested a new ministry – for the Development of Intelligence. He became Minister for the Development of Intelligence.

  He then came to see me in London to ask what should be done. I told him I had a programme for schools to teach perceptual thinking. This was the CoRT (Cognitive Research Trust) programme. He invited me to Venezuela where I trained 250 teachers. They then in turn picked up some experience, and trained 107,000 more teachers. The programme finally passed into the Ministry of Education and became mandatory in all schools.

  Every country needs a Minister for the Development of Intelligence if the human resources in that country are not to be wasted by inadequate education methods. It is not enough to rely on Ministers of Education to make the needed changes.

  OTHER SUBJECTS

  Many schools are already teaching the use of computers, the Internet and other aspects of information technology. There are, however, other subjects listed below which are equally important. How is space going to be made when the curriculum is already so crowded?

  These subjects are so key that there needs to be a change in how much time is spent on traditional subjects compared to these subjects. As discussed, the amount of time spent on mathematics can be reduced. Subjects like history and geography can be taught with videos downloaded from the Internet. Tanguage and thinking can be integrated together. Less time can be spent on literature.

  Operacy

  Literacy and numeracy are not enough. A mass of knowledge is not enough. As soon as a youngster gets out into the world, there is a need to 'do' and to 'get things done'. Operacy is all about the skill of doing or operating. Youngsters can be given tasks and projects to plan and to carry out. A side effect of this is the sense of achievement when something gets done. This is very important, because youngsters do not have much opportunity for achievement. Operacy may include doing things on your own or as a team, such as in the Young Enterprise scheme. There needs to be a mixture of both.

  Design

  This is part of thinking but needs direct attention. Design tasks can be set. These can be carried out in reality or shown in a drawing. Youngsters can make a drawing showing how to build a house more quickly; how to improve a motor car; how to wash windows in a skyscraper; how to design a supermarket.

  Design is putting things together to deliver value. This is very different from analysis and description. Design is not drawing pretty pictures of a cottage with hollyhocks outside. Designs can be compared and discussed. Practicality and other values can be commented upon.

  Systems behaviour

  There are schools in some parts of the world that do teach simple systems behaviour. This is a very useful way for youngsters to get a sense of how things interact. There can be a basic understanding of positive feedback and negative feedback, amplifying systems, and so on. There is no need to get into very complex matters. What is needed is a sense of how things interact and come together to produce a result. Studying items on their own is not enough.

  The world around

  This involves an understanding of how shops work; how
unions work; how governments work; how the UN is supposed to work; how the media works. It involves some knowledge of how things function and interact. This need not be an in-depth knowledge. There may even be games that youngsters can play to give this understanding.

  SUMMARY: SCHOOLS

  There is a great deal that needs to be done to improve education, but it is rather unlikely to happen. This is because education advisers and consultants have been brought up in the old traditions and want to preserve them. Continuity is the name of the game.

  Education is a classic example of a local equilibrium where all the elements are locked together to keep things as they are.

  At the same time, there are so many new fads and fashions that education is being exhorted to adopt that a reluctance to change at all is understandable.

  Even if an individual school wants to change, it still has the responsibility of getting its pupils through existing examinations, because that will affect their careers. Perhaps a new examination opportunity might be a good way to start change – what about an additional examination in thinking skills?

  9 The Media

  A report has shown that 56 per cent of young people in the United Kingdom do not trust the press. This may seem very alarming. It might be expected of older people with years of experiencing the games of the press, but it is rather alarming for young people to have this degree of mistrust.

  Would this figure surprise or concern the media? I do not think so. I do not think the press ever expect to be trusted. What matters is a good story – even if only part of it is true, that is enough if the story sells.