CONCEPTUAL OBSTACLES TO THE STRENGTHENING OF THINKING

I take up first the conceptual obstacles to the improvement of thinking in schools and colleges. Later I will deal with some of the more practical aspects of the problem.

Disagreements over the nature of thinking

We are not sure what thinking is, just as we are not sure what life is, or experience, or being human. When problems like the abortion issue come to the surface, the general public discovers that matters like these have to be confronted and deliberated upon by everyone. But we must first make provision in the schools for installing thinking as a fundamental aspect of education; and to do this, we need clues as to just what arguments we are dealing with. Following are some of the disagreements that emerge when we begin to consider what we must do to focus on education for thinking.

Comment. By and large, this difference exemplifies the radical difference between education in the sciences and education in the humanities. Science textbooks tend to treat scientific knowledge as settled. Students learn standard methods of problem solving and then are assigned problems that vary somewhat from the paradigm to see if they can extrapolate from the established approach. In the humanities, in contrast, the subject matter is treated as intrinsically problematic, and students are encouraged to look for new problems of interpretation or conceptualization.