Teach Your Children How to Think

Schools are focused more on the handover of the education of absolute truths, than on teaching children how to think for themselves.

The Importance of Teaching Our Children How to Think

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

~Margaret Mead

A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started … He will assume control of your cities, states, and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations … The fate of humanity is in his hands.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Unfortunately, many parents and teachers find it best to pass knowledge to their children in an already processed way. It is like to present a child with a fruit already peeled, cut and chewed. Indeed, the society and schools are so structured that they focus more on the handover of the education of absolute truths, than on teaching children how to think for themselves and how to draw their own conclusions.

Parents that were educated in this manner also will tend to repeat it at home, although they are not always aware of this.

However, to teach a child to blindly believe preconceived truths without developing at its base, a critical thinking strategy, will be taking away one of their most valuable human skill: the ability to exercise self-determination.

The Task to educate a child should be not to build them, but to help the children to create themselves.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

~ William Butler Yeats

Self-determination is the guarantee that if we choose what we choose, we will be the protagonists of our lives. We can make mistakes. In fact, we are very likely to do so, but we will learn from the mistake and move on, enriching our toolkit for life.

From a cognitive point of view, there is nothing more challenging than problems and errors, as they require not only effort but also a process of change or adaptation. When we face a problem, all our cognitive resources are put into action and often, this solution involves a reorganization of the mental scheme.

So, if instead of giving children absolute truths, we pose challenges for them to think about, we are strengthening their ability to observe, reflect, and make decisions. If we teach children to accept without thinking, this information will not be meaningful, will not produce a big change in their brain, but will simply be stored somewhere in their memory, where it will gradually disappear.

On the contrary, when we think about solving a problem or trying to understand what we are wrong, there is a restructuring that gives rise to growth. When children get used to thinking, questioning reality, and finding solutions for themselves, they begin to trust their abilities and face life with greater security and less fear.

Children must find their own way of doing things, give meaning to their world, and form their core values.

How to achieve this?

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

~ Richard Dawkins

A series of experiments developed in the 1970s at the University of Rochester gives us some clues. These psychologists worked with different groups of people and found that rewards can improve motivation and effectiveness to some extent when it comes to repetitive and boring tasks but can be counterproductive when it comes to problems that require thought and understanding. Creative thinking.

Teaching Children to Make Good Choices

Interestingly, people who did not receive external awards had better results in solving complex problems. In fact, in some cases, offering rewards to the children caused them to look for shortcuts and even engage in unethical behavior. The goals changed, and they were no longer to solve the problem, but instead, they aimed for the reward.

These results led psychologist Edward L. Deci to postulate his Theory of Self-Determination, where he observes that motivating people and children to do their best is not necessary to resort to using external rewards. He believes that the best way to motivate the children would be to provide an appropriate environment that meets these three following requirements:

1. Providing the feeling of a degree of competence so that the task does not generate exaggerated frustration and anxiety.

2. Enjoy a degree of autonomy so that we can look for new solutions and implement them, feeling that we have control. This would enable the individual to think outside the box.

3. Maintain an interaction with others to feel supported and connected.

Finally, I encourage you to enjoy this Pixar short “La Luna,” which refers precisely to the importance of letting children find their own way to think and not giving them predetermined answers and resolutions but instead allowing them to come up with their creative solutions. Written and directed by Enrico Casarosa, “La Luna” was inspired by Casarosa’s childhood and tales by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Italo Calvino. The style comes from Hayao Miyazaki’s anime and from La Linea by the Italian cartoonist Osvaldo Cavandoli. [Wikipedia]

Modern education is premised strongly on materialistic values. It is vital that when educating our children’s brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts, a key element of which has to be the nurturing of our compassionate nature.

~ Dalai Lama

Click HERE to Connect with your Daily Horoscope on OMTimes!

You will also enjoy 4 Ways to Identify and Overcome Mental Blocks