Without getting into a long theoretical discussion of the psychology of thinking, allow me to outline an approach which I have found enables me to think productively about the Teaching of Thinking. I hope it may do the same for others and allow thinking to actively enter our curriculum.
The name of a President of the U.S. is James Polk and the white of the egg is called the __________.
If like most people you completed the statement with "yolk" rather than with the correct "albumen," you have demonstrated the workings of a habit of thought — rhyming. Because of the way the task was set up, this habit led you to the wrong answer. Most of the time we hope to learn those habits which lead us to correct answers.
- Firstly, I characterize thinking skills as habits, habits of thought.
The name of a President of the U.S. is James Polk and the white of the egg is called the __________.
If like most people you completed the statement with "yolk" rather than with the correct "albumen," you have demonstrated the workings of a habit of thought — rhyming. Because of the way the task was set up, this habit led you to the wrong answer. Most of the time we hope to learn those habits which lead us to correct answers.
- Secondly, thinking is not one undefined ability. It is made up of many small and distinct "habits" of thought which when combined allow us to do some very complex thinking tasks — some "real" thinking.
- Thirdly, although some children will pick up these habits seemingly spontaneously through incidental learning, very much in the way they picked up speech and language, many will not. Many children need to be taught thinking skills directly, just as many children need to be taught how to use language.
- Because most research has shown that there is precious little generalization of thinking skills across subject areas and across situations, it is important that thinking be taught in each subject area with specific problems culled from that subject area.'
1. Not only is the content in different subject areas different, but often even the
types of thinking skills required are different. A listing of the specific skills required at each level for the study of Judaic studies is beyond the scope of this paper. Still, as is true for all subjects, children must learn to classify and organize information into appropriate categories according to some defined attributes (be they concrete or abstract), they must learn to serialize objects, events or information (that is, they must learn to order them along some continuum, such as size, or time, or degree of severity or importance etc.), and they must
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