A Thinking Mind

“My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. - Robert Maynard Hutchins

I had often wondered why some of my colleagues who were toppers in school or college really never became successful professionals. While they were academically excellent, what was that they lacked?

Perhaps they pursued knowledge too much. Somewhere they (and our education system made them) believe that if they are full of knowledge, they will be valued.

Years later when I started recruiting people for my own organization, I realized I was not looking for people who can pour out volumes of knowledge – but perhaps I was looking for people who could create, take decision, solve problems, analyze and then hypothesize, predict and estimate et al. I was looking for people who could THINK!

Consider these two questions:

Which gas is filled in gas balloons?

Which properties of Helium make it ideal for gas balloons?

The trouble with the former Factual question is that it has one right answer which I have to supply from my memory. The advantage of the later Thinking question is that I can DEDUCE the answer from my UNDERSTANDING. Also I can come up with more than one answer. It’s quite obvious what kinds of questions will induce, expand and develop thinking.

Here are some guidelines to develop more thinking minds:

1.       Do not answer their questions – let them think, research, hypothesize about the possible answers. Avoid looking for immediate answer - Give them time. (see 5 below).

2.       Ask them open, thinking questions. Remember an answer in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or a single word indicates a factual question.

3.       A good thinking question focuses not on the right answers, but many answers. For e.g.: “Why did Lakshman went with Ram to forest?” indicates that there is possibly one right answer. However, "what could be the reasons that Lakshman chose to go with Ram" indicated that there are many answers. As a tip - initiate your question with "What" or "How".

4.       Even if the answers do not tally with your answers – resist the temptation to correct the child. Instead ask more follow-up questions. “How can you support your answer?” “How can we find out more about this?” etc.

5.       Even if the child does not reply, remember you have planted a thought seed – often leaving the children to “keep thinking” about it – without the child replying is the best strategy. This way they do not have to worry about their communicative ability (language), also let apprehensions like “what will you think about my answer” come in way. Remember our task is not to get them to answer our questions, but to make them think.

We at Geniekids believe that tomorrow’s heroes, tomorrows successes will be the ones who develop this amazing capacity to think. And if I want a child to be the hero, to be the success, the earlier I start exposing the child to different ways of thinking, the earlier I train the child’s mind to use both his right and left brain, the earlier I harness her natural resource of creative thinking, the better. Also very importantly, is being able to understand and develop his emotional thinking so that child is also a social success. (This development can start at infant age).

Geniekids brings you a wholesome taste of thinking skills in two different ways:

1. Through two programs for children called SUCCESS SATURDAY and CREATIVE SATURDAY. Both are weekend programs for 3.5 to 13 year olds - and very specifically focus on developing Thinking skills in children.
2. Through Train the Trainer program for adults - who would like to understand and explore the wonderful world of learning and training young minds.

By Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur
For www.geniekids.com

For further details on the same, including payment options - please email to info@geniekids.com with subject as "one-to-one"

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