Caleb Anderson: What would it be like if we were all "Cort Thinking"?

Early in my teaching career (early nineties), a phenomenally good school advisor introduced me to Edward DeBono's Cort Thinking Programme. 

This not only revolutionised the way I taught, it changed the way I thought about things. 

DeBono assumed that we could be taught how to think well, and thus be better equipped to make sense of an increasingly complex world ...  a world awash in information.  

To DeBono, ideas (and facts) were only as good as what you did with them, the key was how you saw (weighed, sorted and classified) them in relation to other ideas.

He proposed model ways of thinking that could be deployed for certain types of problems and at different levels of analysis.  

Consider All Factors (CAF) ...  emphasized the necessity of wider consideration. 

Aims Goals and Objectives (AGO) ...  sought to uncover ultimate intent. 

Aims Possibilities and Choices (APC) ...  opened up options.  

Plus Minus and Interest (PMI) ... emphasized the critiquing of the idea itself. 

First Important Priorities (FIP) ...  emphasized the importance of order. 

Other People's Ideas (OPV) ...  was an invitation to wider consideration and engagement

Consequences and Sequence (A and S) ...  emphasized that the order and timing of ideas mattered.

On any given topic students would be encouraged to apply the relevant model, or multiple models, to evaluate the merit of any given idea (often on bits of paper or using someone to record). 

By way of example, on the issue of the Treaty Princples Bill a group of students might be asked to work on an AGO where they would brainstorm, sort, and order the likely aims goals or objectives of the Bill itself.  Another group might do a PMI activity where the potential plus, minus (positive and negative) and interest points of the bill are identified.  Another group might be asked to come up with an OPV where they would consider the primary and competing points of view on the bill.  

Students would eventually come together and debate the merits of the Bill, its antcipated outcome, and overall merit.  Alternatively, a single group of students could work consecutively through models of their choice over multiple sessions to arrive at a point of decision.

The options are myriad, and students get better (and faster) at managing multiple pieces of information, seeing how "bits"of information relate, and how conflicting ideas might be reconciled.

Efforts to discern good information from bad have usually emphasized issues of source.  The general thrust has been that if it comes from a person with a PhD, from an approved source, from the government itself (or someone endorsed by the government), from the media, or if some research institute says it to be so, then the information is more likely to be true.

I believe there is a much better way.  In fact, I think that trust in a single source, or even multiple (and often interconnected) sources is dangerous.  

I believe that it is critical to teach our students, from as young as possible, to systematically critique ideas themselves (and I mean themselves) ...  to order, sort, compare, weigh  ...  to critique from a multiplicity of angles and perspectives.

There is a very real threat that the next generation of students will drown in a tsunami of information without having the knowledge, and skill, to think their way forward.  

Even worse, is that their thinking will be hijacked by a system (or government) that insists they think in a particular way.  This makes them ripe for manipulation.

If I were Minister of Education I would make the Cort Thinking Programme compulsory in all schools.  I would give it equal status to reading, writing and mathematics, and I would require that it was taught, if not daily, then several times a week.

I would also consign the Aotearoa New Zealand History Curriculum to the dustbin of bad ideas and encourage students to debate freely and intelligently the issues at hand ...  all ideas accepted!   

The best (maybe only) way to combat misinformation is not to block, or filter, information that we don't like, or that makes us uncomfortable, but to critique it intelligently, as free from bias as possible (and I mean as possible) ... to train people how to think and to model this ourselves.

By contrast, it has been very disconcerting to see the ways in which some of the submissions on the Treaty Principle's Bill have been received by some of the members of the committee tasked with receiving these.  

It garners little confidence in our democratic process when those respectfully submitting an alternative view, are told that their view is nonsense by those who are clearly afraid to have their preconceptions exposed to the light of day, who seem to enjoy their dominance, and who have forgotten their duty is to represent rather than to rule.

Things are seldom black and white and no idea is divorced from context and motivation, and even from self interest. 

It was DeBono who coined the phrase "lateral thinking" i.e going wider before you go deeper.  This makes sense to me - when you think about it, when going wider you automatically go deeper, and when ideas rub up against each other they lose their rough edges and start to make sense in new and interesting ways.

Just imagine what it would be like if we were all Cort Thinking for a day, a week, or a month.  I suspect things might start to look very different.

Imagine a treaty discussion where we did that  ...  it would be much different than the discussion we seem to be having now.  

In fact, thinking well is critical to any functioning democracy, if we fail to master the former, we will inevitably forfeit the latter.

Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.