“We teach things, not thinking” – that has a double meaning. One: We teach without thinking. We are unmindful of what we are doing. Two: We do not teach thinking!
I am known to be a relentless blogger, as even today at 81 I blog every single day, thank God. Not known as a teacher, I have a BSA Agriculture degree, major in Ag Edu. I did teach at UP Los Baños and had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: 2 of my 1967 students later became well-known in their own rights, girl and boy. Classmates in Horticulture. Girl: At the UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, Candida “Ayds” Bernabe-Adalla became College Dean. Boy: Vic Ladlad became a New Peoples’ Army commander, probably encouraged by my teaching against science minding only collectible cents, ignoring common people.
Plus: From the College of Agriculture of Xavier University, from my 1968 lessons on organic agriculture, Nicanor “Nicky” Perlas graduated to biodynamic farming and later won the world-coveted alternative-Nobel Right Livelihood Award in 2003.
I did not learn such kind of thinking leading to such kind of teaching at UP Los Baños – I learned before college. The rich and open library of Rizal Junior College (High School Department) in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan, led and encouraged me to be a creative writer – which requires that you be a creative thinker first.
What we do teach in school, from Grade 1 to Graduate School, is critical thinking (scientific). What we do not teach is creative thinking. So how can I celebrate today, Tuesday, 05 October 2021, “World Teachers’ Day” when the world’s teachers are teaching only the bitter half, not also the better half, of thinking?
My favorite example of creative thinking is from poet & wit Oscar Wilde:
Between the optimist and the pessimist,
the difference is droll.
The optimist sees the doughnut,
the pessimist the hole!
Be positive, not negative. Explore, not deplore.
Today, explore digital! Use the laptop to teach critical/creative thinking. Examples:
(laptop image[1] from YouTube)
Grade 1: On Microsoft Word, teach children to type their complete name, select the text, and store in memory with their initials as tag. Today, I type FAH and press F3 right after H, and out comes Frank A Hilario. The children will love the magic of it!
High School: Teach to read and memorize without consciously memorizing – For instance, let the students read the Reader's Digest and type the lines they like. That will help them learn to type well, plus learning from other minds will prove delightful.
College: Google! The Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein is a lesson in both critical and creative thinking. He came about relativity by intuition, later thinking E = mc2 by logic.
State colleges & universities (SCUs) – SCUs have the best reason for teaching thinking: Agriculture is a dull subject!@517
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