00:00:11
when I first started uh working teaching
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in the ivy league I had very high
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expectations um these are the kids that
00:00:20
are the cream of the crop of our
00:00:21
educational system they get the highest
00:00:23
gpas the highest SATs the most AP
00:00:27
courses these are the smart kids right
00:00:30
and so I was very excited to work with
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them I soon learned and saw some things
00:00:35
that I didn't expect um I noticed that
00:00:38
my students could take any test and get
00:00:41
an A any test I could give them they
00:00:43
could take it and get an A I noticed
00:00:45
that if I gave them instructions for the
00:00:47
assignment they could Ace the assignment
00:00:49
but anytime that I gave them an
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unstructured assignment anytime that i g
00:00:54
you know didn't tell them exactly what
00:00:56
was on the test prior to the test they
00:00:58
had great difficulty if I asked them to
00:01:00
solve a novel problem of some kind they
00:01:02
had really great difficulty and I was
00:01:04
surprised by this I wondered to myself
00:01:07
what were they doing for those years in
00:01:09
their K12 experience and what I came to
00:01:11
realize is what they were doing was
00:01:14
getting very good at doing school they
00:01:17
got very good at school and I was
00:01:19
worried that this skill wouldn't
00:01:21
transfer to being good at life that
00:01:23
those skills might not be
00:01:25
transferable um my kids could win at the
00:01:28
game show Jeopardy
00:01:30
they were full of
00:01:32
information they had encyclopedic recall
00:01:35
of facts but they didn't have they they
00:01:38
weren't knowledge able they didn't have
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an ability with knowledge that they
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could take information and structure it
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and do something with it to solve a
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novel problem in a word they couldn't
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think so what is thinking what does it
00:01:53
mean what do we mean when we say
00:01:55
thinking thinking is simply a process of
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structuring information
00:02:00
and doing something with it taking
00:02:02
information structuring it organizing it
00:02:04
in such a way to do something meaningful
00:02:06
with it now there are a number of
00:02:08
different types of thinking major types
00:02:10
of thinking there's creative thinking
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critical thinking there's systems
00:02:15
thinking interdisciplinary or scientific
00:02:18
thinking and there's also emotional
00:02:20
intelligence or pro-social thinking that
00:02:22
these are all wildly important thinking
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skills all students need to know them we
00:02:28
shouldn't discriminate among them
00:02:30
of course our schools don't discriminate
00:02:32
among them they're killing all of them
00:02:36
equally now this problem that uh that
00:02:41
the problem of of students getting to
00:02:43
college and not being able to think is
00:02:45
an educational problem it's rooted in
00:02:47
education but it has Global
00:02:50
effects these Global effects are not
00:02:53
just seen by professors in classrooms
00:02:56
they're seen by everyone parents worry
00:02:58
that their students don't have have the
00:03:00
common sense skills to make it in life
00:03:04
teachers worry that what they're doing
00:03:05
in the classroom isn't preparing kids
00:03:07
for for life and businesses and CEOs
00:03:10
when they're interviewed they
00:03:12
consistently complain that the applicant
00:03:15
pool is not ready for the
00:03:17
workforce of course as Citizens and
00:03:19
voters we can see the 24-hour news cycle
00:03:23
polls and even presidential debates
00:03:24
lacking in critical analysis and
00:03:27
thinking and who Among Us hasn't wanted
00:03:29
to at least once throttle a customer
00:03:32
service person for their thoughtless
00:03:37
automaticity this problem starts with
00:03:39
education but it has Global
00:03:42
implications how many of you have played
00:03:45
with Legos you played with them as a kid
00:03:48
I played with them as a kid and when
00:03:50
when I got them they were in a bucket
00:03:51
right they came in a big bucket there
00:03:53
were no instructions you threw them out
00:03:54
on the floor and you were able to make
00:03:57
whatever you wanted you could make a
00:03:58
bridge you could make a house you could
00:04:00
make a pterodactyle if you wanted to
00:04:02
well that's not how they come today
00:04:04
today it's dependent
00:04:06
on instructions they come in a box like
00:04:10
this a kit like this and it's very
00:04:12
dependent on the on the child reading
00:04:14
the instructions in order to build the
00:04:17
kit if you don't follow the instructions
00:04:19
you're not going to end up with an
00:04:21
imperial drop ship with four
00:04:22
Stormtroopers and you certainly can't
00:04:24
build a pterodactyle with this
00:04:27
kit here's my fear there not not that
00:04:30
there's not a lot of thinking that goes
00:04:31
into these kits there's a tremendous
00:04:33
amount of thinking that goes into these
00:04:34
kits and it's all happening on a desk in
00:04:37
billin dead Mark at Lego headquarters
00:04:40
the people who design these kits are
00:04:42
making great strides in their thinking
00:04:44
but it's not happening on the kid's desk
00:04:47
where the kid is building it my fear is
00:04:49
that this Lego example is a metaphor for
00:04:52
what's happening in education today we
00:04:55
are as curriculum designers and teachers
00:04:57
and Educators over engineering the
00:04:59
content curriculum and we're surgically
00:05:01
removing the thinking so that our kids
00:05:03
are simply following instructions
00:05:06
painting by the numbers and getting the
00:05:08
grade we need to get thinking back on
00:05:12
every
00:05:14
desk I'm I'm happy to say that the
00:05:17
educational conversation the
00:05:18
conversation nationally has moved to
00:05:21
talking a lot about education that's a
00:05:22
great thing lots of people are talking
00:05:25
about education everybody's got
00:05:27
different solutions for how to fix
00:05:28
education and the best thing is we know
00:05:31
that it's broken the system is broken
00:05:33
and that's a good thing because knowing
00:05:34
it will help us to fix it now the most
00:05:37
important thing that we have to remember
00:05:39
is that education is not going to be
00:05:41
fixed from a top and trickle down
00:05:43
approach it's going to be fixed from a
00:05:45
bottom and Bubble Up
00:05:48
approach there are over 60 million
00:05:52
lessons taught every day in this country
00:05:55
60
00:05:56
million that is where education happens
00:05:59
every day in those 60 million lessons
00:06:01
where teachers and students and ideas
00:06:04
come together in a Triad we've got to
00:06:07
get thinking back into that equation
00:06:10
we've got to get thinking at every desk
00:06:13
now I've traveled around the country and
00:06:15
the world talking about the importance
00:06:16
of thinking and I'll tell you this I've
00:06:19
never really met anyone who seriously
00:06:21
looks me in the eye and says I don't
00:06:23
think thinking is that important we all
00:06:25
know that thinking is critically
00:06:27
important
00:06:30
and yet even even a billion dollars of
00:06:34
research from The Gates Foundation shows
00:06:36
us that education in education the way
00:06:39
to fix education is to teach thinking
00:06:42
skills so what are we doing to teach
00:06:45
thinking skills in the
00:06:47
classroom in my work with classrooms and
00:06:49
schools and districts around the country
00:06:51
I see one very common strategy I call it
00:06:54
the bandwidth solution the idea is that
00:06:58
if we simply put enough information if
00:07:01
we increase the size of the pipe and we
00:07:03
ask students to learn more stuff that
00:07:07
somehow miraculously they will end up
00:07:10
being
00:07:11
thinkers it reminds me of one of my
00:07:13
favorite
00:07:15
cartoons we do this stuff and then a
00:07:18
miracle occurs and then of course
00:07:20
thinking will
00:07:21
happen and I think of the The Faculty of
00:07:24
this country and myself included as
00:07:26
being sort of from the future we get the
00:07:30
kids when when they're done with the K12
00:07:32
system we get them so in a way we come
00:07:34
from the future with a message and that
00:07:36
message is the miracle didn't
00:07:40
happen our college students can't
00:07:44
think we don't need a miracle what we
00:07:46
need is a method we need the ability to
00:07:49
teach thinking through a method in our
00:07:52
schools alongside the
00:07:56
lessons there are four Universal
00:07:59
thinking
00:08:00
skills that research shows are happening
00:08:03
and that we can use to teach kids how to
00:08:07
think if we teach these skills they lead
00:08:10
to those six types of thinking I talked
00:08:12
about critical thinking creative
00:08:13
thinking interdisciplinary and
00:08:15
scientific thinking and even pro-social
00:08:17
and emotional
00:08:19
development the first thing that we can
00:08:21
do to get kids thinking again is to
00:08:24
teach them to make distinctions between
00:08:26
ideas and objects and things what is
00:08:29
does it mean to make a distinction what
00:08:31
we mean is to Define our terms but we
00:08:33
don't just want to define the terms we
00:08:35
want kids to learn to increasingly over
00:08:38
time create more sophisticated more
00:08:41
nuanced
00:08:43
distinctions we want when a student
00:08:45
takes something and and makes a
00:08:48
distinction they're actually bringing
00:08:50
something into existence and in doing
00:08:52
that we get a deeper understanding of
00:08:54
things we have more clarity of thought
00:08:57
and in turn more clarity of
00:08:58
communication
00:09:00
the second thing we can do to get kids
00:09:03
thinking again is to te them to look at
00:09:06
the parts and the holes that make up
00:09:09
systems every part is a hole and every
00:09:12
hole is a part that is
00:09:14
universal it's often said in science
00:09:16
that there are really fundamentally just
00:09:18
two kinds of scientists there's
00:09:20
Splitters and there's lumpers Splitters
00:09:22
are the the scientists who sort of break
00:09:24
things down into parts and then break
00:09:26
those parts into parts and so on and so
00:09:28
on and lumpers take all the parts and
00:09:30
they put them back together again what
00:09:32
we need to do is create a new generation
00:09:35
of of young students who are spumps who
00:09:39
can split and lump
00:09:42
easily they can construct new ideas and
00:09:45
they can deconstruct old ideas or
00:09:47
existing
00:09:49
ideas the third thing we can do to get
00:09:52
thinking back into the classroom is to
00:09:55
recognize relationships to teach our
00:09:57
children to recognize relationships
00:09:59
between and among ideas in our schools
00:10:01
today we almost teach the lack of
00:10:03
relationships or disconnection we teach
00:10:05
in departments in courses in subject
00:10:08
areas and in disciplines and yet we know
00:10:11
that the world is a very interconnected
00:10:13
place we need to get our kids seeing
00:10:15
more of these connections more of these
00:10:19
relationships the fourth thing that we
00:10:21
can do to get our kids thinking again is
00:10:24
to take multiple
00:10:26
perspectives everything looks different
00:10:29
when you take A New
00:10:31
Perspective and when we teach
00:10:33
perspective taking there are there are
00:10:35
things that are correlated with teaching
00:10:37
perspective taking that we all want
00:10:39
increased empathy increased compassion
00:10:42
increased pro-social thinking and
00:10:44
emotional development even things like
00:10:46
increased skills of negotiation and
00:10:48
conflict resolution and spatial
00:10:51
reasoning perspectives are wildly
00:10:55
important these four skills distinctions
00:10:58
syst systems relationships and
00:11:00
perspectives what I call
00:11:03
dsrp will get kids thinking again and
00:11:06
they combine in lots of different ways
00:11:08
to create an A A an Ecology of thoughts
00:11:11
that are very very complex they're
00:11:14
actually Universal to the process of
00:11:16
thinking and they're Universal to that
00:11:18
process of taking information and
00:11:20
structuring it and turning it into some
00:11:22
kind of knowledge that we can use our
00:11:25
kids are flooded with information we're
00:11:28
all flooded with information in this day
00:11:29
and age there's information coming at us
00:11:32
from all directions the number one thing
00:11:35
we can do for our children is give them
00:11:37
the tools to structure that information
00:11:39
in meaningful ways so that they can do
00:11:41
something with it and believe me if we
00:11:44
don't teach them to think there are
00:11:46
plenty of people who will be will
00:11:48
happily think for
00:11:51
them I'm happy to report that these four
00:11:54
skills DSR and P are being taught in
00:11:58
preschool to GR grad school around the
00:12:00
country and around the world we're
00:12:02
seeing remarkable effects little kids
00:12:05
are learning the same thinking skills
00:12:07
that the big kids are
00:12:09
learning this is my son Carter at 10
00:12:13
months old he is empirically cute we've
00:12:17
done
00:12:20
research um what he's doing actually is
00:12:24
uh he's organizing his Cheerios his
00:12:27
strawberries and his uh and his
00:12:29
blueberries and he lines them up and
00:12:31
groups them together and then he eats
00:12:33
them based on the ones that he likes
00:12:34
that particular day and um what's
00:12:38
remarkable about this photo is that at
00:12:40
this time in Carter's life he doesn't
00:12:42
actually know the words for blueberry
00:12:45
strawberry or
00:12:47
Cheerios but he is making
00:12:50
distinctions he's taking perspectives
00:12:52
and grouping things into little part
00:12:53
hole systems and making relationships
00:12:56
he's doing dsrp in fact he and all of us
00:12:59
are hardwired to do dsrp these are
00:13:03
Universal processes of structuring
00:13:07
information now as Carter goes into our
00:13:10
school system he will be encouraged to
00:13:14
begin memorizing information and and and
00:13:17
regurgitating it he will be encouraged
00:13:19
to take tests he'll be encouraged to
00:13:21
follow instructions and in particular
00:13:23
he'll be encouraged not to make any
00:13:25
mistakes and look only for the right
00:13:27
answers over time he will be discouraged
00:13:31
from his natural talent for thinking a
00:13:35
talent we all are born with now Carter
00:13:38
is my son but someday he'll be
00:13:41
somebody's
00:13:42
student he'll be somebody's employee
00:13:46
he'll be somebody's boss somebody's
00:13:49
husband somebody's father he'll be a
00:13:51
voting citizen in our
00:13:53
democracy his ability to think is no
00:13:57
more important than any child ability to
00:14:00
think I'm reminded of the global effects
00:14:03
of thinking every day when I leave my
00:14:05
house and I see this on the on the wall
00:14:07
of my barn as I leave the house thinking
00:14:10
really lies at the root of
00:14:13
democracies in our Declaration of
00:14:16
Independence it says that governments
00:14:19
derive their just powers from the
00:14:22
consent of the
00:14:25
governed I have a question for
00:14:27
you what is the meaning of that consent
00:14:31
if the governed are not
00:14:35
thinking as a solution to the
00:14:38
educational
00:14:39
problem getting thinking at every desk
00:14:42
might seem far
00:14:45
reaching but I am given hope every time
00:14:48
I hear from a parent that says my
00:14:52
daughter in learning these thinking
00:14:53
skills has completely changed in just
00:14:56
six
00:14:57
months I'm given great hope when I hear
00:15:01
from teachers who say I'm more engaged
00:15:03
and more excited about teaching than
00:15:05
ever in 26
00:15:07
years because we're teaching thinking
00:15:09
skills which are going to matter for
00:15:11
these students I have more hope that we
00:15:14
can fix the problems of Education when I
00:15:17
see these little Head Start kids
00:15:19
learning the same four thinking skills
00:15:22
that doctoral students in the ivy league
00:15:24
are using that inventors experts and
00:15:27
scientists are using every day and
00:15:29
they're learning them at a young young
00:15:31
age it gives me great hopes that we can
00:15:34
fix education we can do this but we need
00:15:37
to get started right away we need to get
00:15:41
teach think teaching thinking back at
00:15:44
every desk thank you very much
