Thinking
An extract from Edward de Bono's Teach Your Child How To Think

INFORMATION AND THINKING
Information is very important. Information is easy to teach. Information is easy to test. It is not surprising that so much of education is concerned with information.
Thinking is no substitute for information but information may be a substitute for thinking.
Most theological definitions grant God perfect and complete knowledge. When knowledge is perfect and complete there is no need for thinking.
In some areas we might be able to achieve complete information and then those areas become routine matters that require no thinking. In the future we shall hand over these routine matters to computers. Unless we have complete information we need thinking in order to make the best use of the information we have. When our computers and information technology give us more and more information we also need thinking in order to avoid being overwhelmed and confused by all the information.
When we are dealing with the future we need thinking because we can never have perfect information about the future.
For creativity, design, enterprise and doing anything new, we need thinking.
We need thinking in order to make even better use of information that is also available to our competitors.
So information is not enough. We do need thinking as well. Unfortunately there is a difficult dilemma. All information is valuable. Every new bit of information is of increasing value because it adds to what we already know. So how do we get the courage to reduce the amount of time we spend on teaching information in order to find time to teach the thinking skills that are needed to make the best use of the information? A trade-off is clearly needed.

INTELLIGENCE AND THINKING
The belief that intelligence and thinking are the same has led to two unfortunate conclusions in education:
1. That nothing needs to be done for students with a high intelligence because they will automatically be good thinkers.
2. That nothing can be done for students without a high intelligence because they cannot ever be good thinkers.
The relationship between intelligence and thinking is like that between a car and the driver of that car. A powerful car may be driven badly. A less powerful car may be driven well. The power of the car is the potential of the car just as intelligence is the potential of the mind. The skill of the car driver determines how the power of the car is used. The skill of the thinker determines how intelligence is used.
I have often defined thinking as: 'the operating skill with which intelligence acts upon experience'.
Many highly intelligent people often take up a view on a subject and then use their intelligence to defend that view. Since they can defend the view very well they never see any need to explore the subject or listen to alternative views. This is poor thinking and is part of the 'intelligence trap'.
Highly intelligent people are usually good at solving puzzles or problems where all the pieces are given. They are less good at situations which require them to find the pieces and to assess the value of the pieces.

Finally there can be an ego problem. Highly intelligent people do like to be right. This may mean that they spend their time attacking and criticizing others - since it is so easy to prove the others wrong. It also may mean that highly intelligent people are unwilling to take speculative risks because they cannot then be sure they are right. There is, of course, nothing to prevent highly intelligent people also being excellent thinkers. But this does not follow automatically. There is need to develop the skill of thinking.