## TYPES OF THINKING

### Passive thinking

In a recent experiment I gave a real problem to 44 people to solve. Only one of them produced the solution which was eventually chosen by the whole group. But with the aid of a deliberate creative technique, 14 out of 44 produced this solution. A fourteen-fold increase in creativity.

It would be absurd to assert that since thinking is not taught directly as a subject in its own right it is not taught at all. Manifestly, a good deal of mind training goes on. Yet, if we compare children and those who have had little education with those who have had an extended education we find little difference in sheer thinking ability within the limits of the knowledge availability to an individual. It may be that thinking is not taught effectively enough or that the wrong sort of thinking is taught.

In considering the thinking that is already taught it is best to treat mathematics separately. That leaves the type of thinking that is taught indirectly as part of every other subject. There are a few subjects, such as Latin, which are taught specifically because it is believed that they train the mind in an important way. Most subjects, however are taught for their own intrinsic worth (physics, geography, history, etc.) and mind training is a by-product. Obviously, in tackling any subject whatsoever, a pupil has to do some thinking as well as memorizing.

The type of thinking traditionally taught emphasizes the following aspects:

comment,
description,
analysis,
classifying,
putting in place and
relating.

All these are different aspects of what we regard as the highest form of intellectual activity: scholarship. This idiom involves accurate treatment in depth of a focused area, eschewing speculation and relating in detail to other works.

Another dominant aspect of the type of thinking we encourage is criticism. Next, to scholarship we esteem the critical intelligence as the desired product of our education system. Though the critical mind has a distinct role to play in society, it may be that we esteem it too highly for criticism is one of the easier forms of intellectual effort and one of the more limited. The critical intelligence cannot of itself generate the new ideas that are required for progress and even just to deal with changing circumstances.

The dominance of the critical mind may be seen in the results of a simple experiment. Different groups were asked to make five comments on a wheelbarrow design. The comments were mainly negative because the critical mind compares what is offered with what is expected and complains about discrepancy. It is the creator who makes it his business to go beyond the expected.

Entirely negative comments were made by 83.5 per cent of a group of business executives; by 80 per cent of a group all of whom had IQs over 148; and 82.6 per cent of a group of teachers. But when the problem was given to a group of 12 year old children a large number of creative comments were mixed in with the critical ones (for example, can turn a sharper corner, excellent for tipping especially into a ditch, useful for scooping stuff out of a pile, cannot strain your back, etc.). The critical creative ratio was 2:1 for the children; 20:1 for the business executives; 20:1 for the high IQ group; and 27:1 for the teachers.

The third type of thinking traditionally taught is a concentration on the past. Since the past is always increasing in amount (both through investigation and also through the sheer passage of well-documented time) there is less and less room for anything else.

There is nothing wrong with any of these three types, but they do not cover the whole of thinking or even its most useful aspects. This type of thinking could be characterized as "passive" since it is directed more towards contemplation than action. In contrast "active" thinking is directed towards action.