Learning to think - a short debate on education

It was a late night at the office yesterday - partly because I was dreading the thought of driving up Sheikh Zayed Road in a Nissan Tiida while my rather more robust Jeep was being fixed. Anyway, the radio debate on Dubai Eye was quite interesting so I focused on that as I drove along at hub cap level with the 4x4's and trucks zooming past me.

A panel was talking about education, and posed a rather interesting question: should children be taught to learn or taught to think?

I pondered this one and conclude that it is a very interesting question! We have all crammed for a test, pushing knowledge in through one ear for it to all fall out of the other as soon as the bell goes to say time's up. And I remember sitting hungover through university lectures, having information thrown at me with no idea whether it's going to stick, how useful it might be in later life, and for how long it's going to remain relevant and true.

That is teaching to learn, and all seems a bit short term considering the amount of time, energy and money invested in it.

Teaching to think on the other hand is getting kids to question the world around them. Teachers answer a question with, "what do you think?" or "why don't you look it up and tell me what you find out?". It's about encouraging kids to think for themselves, explore the world, question authority, even...excuse me and my ambitious ideas...read a newspaper and pick up a book or two.

My first thought was, kids would come out of school not knowing anything. But on consideration, who cares what they know, it's what they can do that counts! How much of what is taught in schools is actually directly used in daily working life? As one of the panel said, most of the time we're all making it up anyway...but what enables us to make it up is our knowledge of where to look for information, how to assimilate it, and how to use our experience and initiative to get the job done.

If schools can equip kids with this kind of skill set then they are welcome in any company I work in. The rest is down to training.