One Thanksgiving, a child observed her father making the turkey. The child noted that Dad cut off a big chunk of the back end of the turkey before putting it in the oven. When asked why he did this, the child’s father said, “That’s the way your grandmother always did it!” So, the child approached grandma and asked, “Dad just cut off part of the turkey before cooking. He said it is because that is the way you did it. Why did you do that?”
Grandma replied, “Because my pan was too small.”
The flaw in the father’s thinking was that he simply repeated what his mother did without considering why she did it. It was rote repetition without reflection or evaluation. There was a flaw in this thinking that caused him to not only waste a part of the turkey but focus on a meaningless detail perhaps to the detriment of more important parts of the process.
What we think is important. How we think is equally so. In my decades teaching thousands of students and many subjects, I believed that the kids could be successful in school by mastering a specific set of behaviors: turn your work in on time, use an assignment notebook, take notes, go in for extra help, etc. I even made a list of these moves that helped you win the game of school.
However, sometimes, students who did these things still did not excel. Sometimes, kids who did these things turned in work that was underdeveloped and poorly thought-out. The behaviors were a surface symptom of an underlying process: their thinking!
I came to understand that the skill of thinking had to be taught alongside the content. How we mentally worked out mattered just as much or more as the intellectual weights we were lifting. It isn’t a matter of just doing something, it is the way we think about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
As a teacher, I understood Bloom’s Taxonomy of Thinking: When I first began to teach it, I put it on a poster in my classroom which looked like this:
I flipped evaluation and synthesis steps because I thought creativity and connection were more sophisticated than criticism. However, as I came to think about the taxonomy, I also realized that none of these parts were “higher” than the others. They were simply different tools for different jobs. There are times when simple memorization is the right choice. Often, a simple list works far better than an elaborate critique.
But Bloom’s taxonomy was not enough. I watched students be able to note the processes without deeply understanding the differences between them. Bloom’s labels were just another form of content. There was something else needed.
The something else, I realized later in my teaching career than I’d like to admit, is a set of thinking skills that take the same kind of regular exercise practice that one uses for physical fitness. Understanding them, labeling them, or being able to use them simply is not enough. So here is a beginning list. I will write more about this in future posts:
Students must be able to think metacognitively: reflect about their own thinking.
They must learn to be intellectually flexible and be able to select the right thinking tool for the job.
They must come to terms with their fear of failure and error and embrace making mistakes – and this skill has huge implications for grading.
Students must understand the double-edged sword of habit: habit can automate things and it can also freeze things and make change difficult. Practice makes permanent, not necessarily perfect.
They must be able to take feedback and listen to coaches and helpers. Students must have the humility to always ask themselves, “What if I am in error? Is there another way I could approach this?”
Students must be their own critics, but not their own punching bags. Their self-evaluations must be focused on improvement as well as acknowledging their goals and gains - not self-flagellation (or false humility).
They must be able to think quickly and slowly, have good intellectual reflexes, and know when to wait and percolate instead.
They must be able to see and make connections as Bloom describes – but this also means they have to be willing to take thoughtful risks. They can’t be content to always think it safe. Again, students will not do this if their teacher grades them down for it!
Students must be curious! They must ask questions and be willing to both find answers and sometimes live in the uncomfortable place of conflicting points of view – or answers that are not satisfying.
The list is far from complete, and I intend to write more about this. Thinking flexibility and fitness are as important as any content. Without it, the behaviors are robotic repetitions that will not help our children thrive in a world that is changing at warp speed. AI is getting smarter by the day: our children must have the thinking and reasoning skills to keep up!
