We need to teach kids how to think, not what to think | Jesse Richardson | TEDxBrisbane

Jesse Richardson is the founder of schoolofhought.org - an online fully immersive learning environment that will be free for students, teachers and universities all over the world. He believes the key to engaging future generations is to teach them how, and not what, to think.

Jesse Richardson is a creative director with over 15 years’ industry experience, and around 20 years’ experience arguing with people on the Internet. He’s responsible for three major international viral campaigns, two and a bit kids, and an ungrateful, overweight cat.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

We can probably all agree
that education is important, right?

That's pretty universal.

But I want you to think back
to your time in school

and see if you can remember something.

See if you can remember a time

when you were actually
taught how to think.

Well, the lesson you were being given

was specifically teaching
little you as a kid,

with big, wide eyes
and a sponge-like brain,

how to go about
the business of thinking.

Now, if your experience
was anything like mine,

you'll probably struggle to think
of a single instance when that occurred.

And when you think about it,
that's completely insane, isn't it?

In at least, what, ten years
that we all spend in school,

we get taught all sorts of knowledge
like, "This plus this equals that,"

"Such and such happened
in nineteen diggity two,"

which is great,

but the actual teaching of how to think,

not so much, right?

So, the idea I'd like to share today

is that we need to teach kids
how to think, not what to think.

Now, if you're unfortunate enough
to be talking to a conspiracy theorist,

they might tell you that the reason
we're not taught how to think

is that the powers that be
don't want us sheeple

waking up to their lizard people,
GMO, chemtrail, vaccine propaganda.

(Laughter)

Or something.

But I suspect the real reason is quite
substantially more boring and plausible.

As Sir Ken Robinson identified

in his wonderful TED Talk
on how schools kill creativity,

that's just kind of how the school
system responded to industrialization,

and now it's a big entrenched bureaucracy
and bloody hard to change, right?

And remember we set this whole
education system thing up

around the same time that we thought
hitting kids with sticks was a good idea,

and if they had a cough, we gave them
heroin-based cough syrup,

like, with actual heroin in it,

which, you know, admittedly was
pretty effective at calming it down.

But the point is that we weren't exactly
sophisticated in our understanding.

But now, as we all know, our world
and our economy are changing rapidly,

and how we approach education
needs to adapt.

So, what's different about teaching
children how to think

is that we're involving them
in the process of their own learning.

Instead of just telling them
to memorize the right answer,

we're asking them to engage
their own minds, their own awareness,

by questioning things,

attaining understanding,
not just knowledge.

And that involvement,
that engagement, is so important

because it keeps a spark
of curiosity alive

that so often dies around the same time

that kids start resenting the kind
of only-one-right-answer didactic nature

with so much schoolwork;
it's usually around grade 3 or 4.

And when you alight that curiosity,

you no longer have to push
knowledge on to kids

because they actually want to understand.

There's no need for carrots
and sticks to force learning

because they become self-powered,
nerdy, little curiosity machines.

And as result of that, you know,

they are, you know, able to think
entirely on their own merits.

But what are actually talking about here
when we say "learning how to think"?

Well, I think part of it is creativity.

But creativity isn't just
some self-indulgent feely thing.

It largely defines us as a species.

When you think about it,

almost every great innovation,

political theory
or scientific breakthrough

has sprung from creative thinking, right?

So, from Plato to Einstein,
from agriculture to iPads,

because creative thinking is, in essence,
nothing more than making new connections.

But to be clear,

what I'm talking about here
isn't creative expression.

Art's great, but what I'm advocating
is less like art and more like design.

And the difference between art and design

is that art is an expression,
whereas design solves a problem.

So the point of teaching kids
how to think creatively

is to teach them how to be adaptive,

how to innovate
in order to solve problems.

Not sitting in a loft with red wine,
ciggies and a black skivvy,

suffering the burden of no one
understanding their artistic genius,

but sitting in a planning meeting,
or a startup incubator,

or anywhere else in the real world

that contributes
to our real-world economy.

So, our schools need
to teach creative thinking.

But I think that's only half of it -

I think that's only half of it because
teaching creative thinking is great,

but if you're just open
to new connections,

then, you know, that's a little bit
of a recipe for disaster as well

because you need to keep
your thinking to account.

Never trust a brain,

especially your own,

because we are, every single one of us,
prone to cognitive biases,

to prejudices and to the blinding effects
of privilege and in-group psychology.

We like to think of ourselves
as really quite objective and clever,

but the unfortunate truth
is that we are all, to some extent,

flawed, ignorant and deluded,

which, you know, sounds not good.

But happily, we can do something about it
by learning critical thinking skills.

What critical thinking teaches us
is how to question things rigorously,

how to form sound, well-reasoned,
coherent thoughts and arguments

and critically how to identify bullshit.

But perhaps the most
important thing it teaches us

is that it's good to be wrong,

that the ideas we hold aren't us

and that we don't need
to defend them to the death,

and, in fact, that we can
change those ideas

and that it is absolutely
liberating to do so.

It's something really fundamental
to how we approach the world

to have the vulnerability and the humility

to be receptive to the idea
that I might be wrong, you know?

It's profoundly transformative.

And when we're trained
as critical thinkers,

something significant shifts

because we become
aware of our own thinking.

"Why do I think this?
How have I come to this conclusion?"

We become quite literally self-aware.

This is my thesis:

that creative and critical thinking
are two sides of the same coin,

two parts of an equation
that add up to how to think.

And what's really interesting
is that something happens

when our mind is trained to think
both creatively and critically

because that equation adds up
to more than just a sum of its parts.

There's a seed of genius,
there's a fertility of understanding,

that allows our mind to grow
to such great heights

when it's able to think creatively

in dynamic interplay
with thinking critically.

When those two aspects
of our ability work together,

amazing things happen.

A da Vinci moment's born
from the cognitive alchemy

of a mind that is free
to plan and explore,

yet also disciplined
to apply reason and rationality.

And such a mind is also
a fortress of understanding.

It's largely impervious to the lies
and the nefarious manipulations

of politicians, the media
and the advertising industry,

which presents me
with something of a segue.

So, for the past 15 years or so,

I've been manipulating people into buying
things that they probably don't need,

working as an advertising creative
in the ad industry.

And in that time,

I've learned a fair bit
about both creativity and bullshit.

But perhaps the most
important thing I learned

is that if you want an ad to be effective,
you need to create genuine engagement,

and you need to do so
using the power of simplicity.

If you can get that right,

then your ad doesn't feel
like an ad anymore.

Instead, it feels like something
that someone might actually not hate

and possibly even want to read,
watch or interact with.

So, but what if we applied that same truth
to education instead of advertising?

Now, we all know that making learning
fun and engaging is a good idea,

it's sort of obvious,

but to be blunt, there really isn't
much evidence of it in practice.

And I think the reason for that

is that the people
who design school syllabuses

usually aren't talented entertainers:

no trained designers, directors
or other creative professionals.

And the unfortunate truth is
that using Comic Sans

and putting an illustration of a zany
scientist up in the corner of the page

doesn't actually make learning
all that much fun, right?

(Laughter)

A great example of how to do it right
is Horrible Histories.

As the name suggests, it takes
all the most awful aspects of history

and puts it into a narrative form.

And of course kids absolutely love it
because it's disgusting and fascinating.

Another wonderful example
of how education should be engaging

happened when a scientist
also happened to be a poet,

because Carl Sagan didn't just
teach us about the cosmos;

he helped us to progress as a society,
he changed how people think.

Now, education is the most important
cornerstone of civilization, isn't it?

Shouldn't we be making it
as engaging and effective as possible?

Shouldn't we be applying the same rigor,

the same innovation
that we do to marketing,

to education?

So, a couple of years ago,

I was teaching my own boys
about logical fallacies,

which is an area of critical thinking,

and it occurred to me

that maybe I could use my advertising
powers for good instead of evil, right?

(Laughter)

Now, fallacies are essentially
like flaws in reasoning,

and I wanted my boys to be aware
of some of the more common ones

like the appeal to nature fallacy.

But all the explanations I'd read online

were these just impenetrably dense
academic walls of text, you know.

And so I did what I do at work when
I'm given a 12-page communication strategy

that I somehow have to fit
onto a billboard someone can read

as they're drive past in their car.

I simplified.

I tried to come up with some
clear explanations and examples

we could about in the car
on the way to school in the morning,

which was actually a really fun exercise.

And I ended up putting together a poster

with 24 of the most
common logical fallacies,

each with a single simple sentence
that clearly explained the concept, right?

And then, it occurred to me

that perhaps the same idea
could work well online, you know,

and I could share it with other parents,
teachers and the world at large.

And so, with the help
of some programmer friends,

we came up with a creative commons website
at yourlogicalfallacyis.com .

The idea was that if you saw someone
committing a fallacy online someway,

you just linked them to it.

If someone was
misrepresenting an argument,

you just linked them to
yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman, right?

So probably the best way to explain it
is to show you an example from the site.

So, this one is false cause,

in which we presume
that a relationship between things

means that one is the cause of the other.

So for example,

"Pointing to a fancy chart, Roger shows
how temperatures have been rising

over the past few centuries,

whilst at the same time,

the number of pirates
have been decreasing.

Thus, pirates cool the world
and global warming is a hoax."

So -

(Laughter)

You get the idea.

We also made the poster available as a PDF

that anyone could download
and print out for free.

So, we launched in 2012,
and yourlogicalfallacyis.com blew up.

It was tweeted by the likes
of the lovely Mr. Stephen Fry, PZ Meyers,

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, our own Dr. Karl,
among thousands of others.

It was featured on sites
like Boing Boing and Upworthy,

melted our servers, front-paged on Reddit,
attracted over 3,5 million unique visitors

and is currently the top
logical fallacies site online.

(Laughter)

It's getting around 10,000
unique visits a day,

and most awesomely the poster
is currently being featured

in may thousands of classrooms
and other kids' bedrooms

all around the world.

So, you know -

(Applause)

Thanks.

(Applause)

So that went quite well.

(Laughter)

It was surprising.

It would seem that making
educational resources simple, fun and free

is a good idea, right?

So, what now?

Well, what if we did the same kind
of thing but on a much bigger scale?

What if we created a platform

that allowed teachers
to teach critical thinking,

that allowed any student
to be able to learn

about philosophy and creative thinking?

What if we created a platform
where anyone could get -

sorry -

where anyone could have access
to resources on thinking?

So just recently, we launched
the School of Thought International,

at schoolofthought.org .

The purpose of the School of Thought

is to help us question
all schools of thought.

What it is is a
not-for-profit online school

where anyone can learn creative
and critical thinking skills for free.

The content, courses, tools, apps,
games and resources that we create

will be available for everyone to use
under a creative commons license,

from primary school teachers through
to university philosophy departments

and any student of any age
anywhere in the world

with an Internet connection.

(Laughter)

And what if instead
of flat images and walls of text

we took the liberty
that an online school can take

and created a fully immersive 3D campus

designed to be a living vision
of an enlightened learning utopia

writ large in the virtual space?

And what if we could actually
help change our school system?

I mean, why are we teaching kids what's
on the periodic table of the elements,

but we're not really teaching them
why science is important,

about philosophy of science

or how to read journalism
with a critical mind,

about how taking evidence-based approaches
helped take us from the Dark Ages

into this golden age of progress
and technological wonder?

I mean, how many lectures
does the average student receive at school

about following the rules?

And yet we don't teach them ethics.

We don't teach kids
how to understand and internalize

the difference between right and wrong.

We just tell them,
"Don't do that, that's wrong,"

and then we yell at them
if they transgress.

We teach kids how to make
extremely ugly shorts in Home Ec.

(Laughter)

But perhaps teaching them
about logic and reason

might be at least as important life skills
in this information age, you know.

What if schools incorporated thinking
as its own subject into their curricula?

Is that such a crazy thought?

I mean, what if we spent as much time
teaching kids how to think for themselves

as we do on English,
Math or any other subject?

Not only would this be great for kids
in all aspects of their learning in life

and the future of our species,

it would also mean that people
with degrees in philosophy

will finally be able to get a job.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

So -

We're approaching perhaps
the most important and volatile period

in all of human history.

Now more than ever, we need to teach kids
how to think, not what to think.

And you know,

if we can do things in collaboration
with people like Peter Elton

from the University of Queensland's
Critical Thinking Project

and cutting-edge who helped us
put together these visualizations,

I think that can be a possibility.

I hope you find this to be
an idea worth spreading.

Thank you.

(Applause)