1.6 - A Classical Framework for Teaching Thinking

Classical Education has since ancient times included an implicit and explicit understanding of the development of thinking.  In most treatments of the progression of how to teach thinking there are four natural steps. A recognition of these four steps and their application to different age groups is vital to answering questions of educational policy for both the content and assessment of schooling at each grade.

 

In the ancient Egyptian text from Shabako Stone, these steps are 1) Reception – the proper use of the senses to acquire knowledge about the world around us.  2) Perception – the accurate processing of such input by mind and heart to understand the inherent patterns of the knowledge.  3) Formation – The organizing of one’s perceptions into language and hence thoughts, and 4) Action – taken to bring life to those thoughts.

 

Many years later Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German poet, put forth his formula for how creativity is developed.  This formula is put forward in several ways in his drama “Faust” and parallels the Egyptian formula, namely:  First there is the Word or Knowledge; Second, the Meaning or Pattern; Third, the Power or what we would call mental discipline or mental modeling; and finally, the Act which is either problem-solving or composition, etc.

 

In our day Robert Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, has summarized these same steps in the following lines, “Knowledge consists of the facts [1], the relations between them [2], the thinking about them [3} and the effort to understand and connect them [4].  It is not out of ignorance that we discover understanding.  It is because of what we already know that we can know more [1], that we can discern organizing principles [2] and make and test hypotheses [3], and act rationally [4].”  These lines tersely reiterate this old proven framework for teaching Thinking.

 

First identified is knowledge and herein lies just one of the great values of teaching a solid core of background knowledge as put forward in the K-8 sequence of the Core Knowledge Foundation.  As John Holdren of that foundation has stated, “Without a lot of pertinent factual knowledge about an issue or problem, you can’t think critically about it – you can only have an uninformed opinion.  If we’re concerned about having students think “critically,” then we have an obligation to give them the knowledge that will make them informed thinkers, not mere likers and dislikers.  That’s why, from the early years, we should teach them a lot of factual knowledge.  We should, of course, also provide frequent opportunities to discuss the facts, to analyze apparent contradictions, to challenge accepted interpretations.  Maybe then we’ll produce at least some students who develop the habit of choosing words carefully, avoiding clichés, and resisting unquestioned orthodoxies – such as the uncritical use of a term like “critical thinking.”  No one, except perhaps Joe Friday, wants ‘just the facts,’ at least not in schools.  We also want – and our students need – opportunities to use the facts, apply them, question them, discuss them, doubt them, connect them, analyze them, verify or deny them, and think critically about them.  All these higher-order activities, however, rely upon having some facts to work with.  Without knowing a lot of facts, you lack a solid foundation upon which to build all higher-order skills.  And that’s a fact.”

 

E. D. Hirsch has stated,”…the almost universal feature of reliable higher-order thinking about any subject or problem is the possession of a broad, well-integrated base of background knowledge relevant to the subject.  This sounds suspiciously like plain common sense…”

 

In the beginning (grades K-3) the acquisition of common knowledge about a wide variety of subjects should be the primary focus of this framework.  While students will naturally be making inferences on their own about the relations of the facts and ideas they are learning, helping students make connections and see the patterns – dissimilitude in similitude, and similitude in dissimilitude – comes at the next level, generally grades 4-6.  During this time teachers in addition to teaching more knowledge specifically look for ways to train students’ perceptions of organizing principles, the relations between things they have learned or observed.

 

During the junior high years (grades 7-8) students continue to learn many new facts and their relationships, but more and more of this is independent, and because of how knowledge builds on knowledge, schema are quicker to form and be modeled.  This must continue and be expected, but at this level mental modeling – the making and testing of arguments and hypotheses (including logic) – must be explicitly and implicitly taught, and students given ample opportunity to practice.  In writing this means essays that marshal several concepts with the underlying evidence.  In history it means an effort to link the patterns of individual human nature with social influence to project explanations of future or past causation.  In math this means symbolic representation of complex problems, algebra and geometry.

           

Jerome Bruner was referring to this stage when he said, “In contrast to analytic thinking, intuitive thinking characteristically does not advance in careful, well-defined steps.  It tends to involve maneuvers based seemingly on an implicit perception of the total problem. Unfortunately, the formulation of school learning has somehow devalued intuition.”  Using the thinking framework one could conclude that intuition became devalued when the steps that lead to it (the acquisition of knowledge and its structure) were removed from the curriculum.

           

Theodore Sizer also refers to his third level (mental modeling) when he says, “A science course, built on sheer memory work, that never gives examples of or experience in scientific inquiry would be as stunted as a course that engages in some sort of disembodied, abstract problem-solving that demands of the students no command of precise knowledge.”  Fortunately, in science education, there seems to be a more direct effort to follow the natural steps of the thinking framework.

           

The final step is action or problem-solving or judgment or creativity.  This is the stage that should be the focus of teachers’ efforts for prepared high school students.  I say prepared because this final higher-order thinking cannot proceed apace if the other three have not preceded.  This is obvious from common sense and most high school teachers wish the majority of their students were prepared for this problem-solving work.  This is also one of the reasons for a core knowledge high school – so that the prior experience of students in a core knowledge elementary and junior high program can be capitalized upon.  The less is more approach, where a fewer number of examples are tackled but each is studied more deeply, only works in this setting.  The course work in our high school would take into account, and assume to the greatest extent possible the common background held by students, the perception of patterns and relations that can only come by wide exposure to a lot of factual knowledge built upon by directed help in projecting learned schema into novel situations.  Such students are prepared for writing, Trigonometry, Calculus, history and economics, literature and art, taught with a high and specific expectation of productivity.  As Peter Emberly said, “This is an education which is without ostentation, and education which through the gradual and sequential formation of habits and talents produces a critical and impartial mind.”

           

And finally by J. W. v Goethe, “Man should not scorn the only instruments he has by which he can attain to some fair approximation of knowledge and wisdom, namely his healthy senses, his power of approach to teaching thinking and will be employed at this school.  It is a significant and unique element of our educational plan worthy of attention and implementation.”

 

Randy W. Everett

Liberty Common School

Fort Collins, Colorado