The Lost Art of Thinking

by Jeannette Webb on January 23, 2012

homeschool high school, college admissions counselors

The Lost Art of Thinking

By Jeannette Webb

My online dictionary defines Thinking as “the process of using one’s mind to consider or reason about something.”    My Noah Webster 1828 dictionary defines it as being “capable of a regular train of ideas.” 

I’m convinced that thinking is a lost art.  I know many people with college degrees who honestly don’t know how to think.  They can do the work put in front of them. They regurgitate facts extremely well.  They can spout another person’s opinion as their own.  But to truly think – to take an idea and wrestle with it all the way to its logical conclusion is, in fact, beyond them.  Even further afield is the ability to take an existing idea and work with it creatively until something new is forged.

I believe there are many reasons we have few thinkers today.

First, our lives are a constant interruption.  No chance for a regular train of ideas here.  We tweet, we comment on Facebook, we tear around the internet, and watch sound bites on TV.  Our brains may move quickly, but I’m convinced they rarely prod deeply.

Secondly, thinking takes time.  In a world that values speed, efficiency, and multi-layer resumes, we’ve forgotten the value of sitting in the hammock and pondering.

Finally, few families place value on cultivating actual thinking skills.  Unfortunately this includes families who are paying for expensive private school educations as well as families who have made the sacrifice to homeschool their kids.  We are efficient and get a lot done.  We spare no expense to provide outstanding textbooks.  We provide the best activities and experiences possible.  And yet, we still miss the boat.

Training the Intellect

I believe wholeheartedly that we need to value intelligent conversation in our homes.  I never allowed my young children to just spout off an opinion.  Even when they were very small we would have Socratic dialog – a tender give and take.  I would gently question their opinion, their thought process, even their words.  I took the time to get to the heart of what they were trying to express.  In the end, I would either commend them on a job well done or gently show them where a rabbit trail got them off track. 

I routinely asked my children to back up what they were saying and they would trot off for books or dictionaries or encyclopedias.  I would help them chase their thoughts all the way to their logical conclusion.  It is important that children learn early that ideas have consequences whether it is staying up too late and having an unproductive day the next day or whether it is foreign policy that will impact millions of lives.  No matter how old your child or how important the issue, it is intellectually dishonest to only take a thought halfway.

My kids soon learned that they had to think carefully before engaging mom and it became a game that delighted our time together:  our days, our meals, our leisurely evenings, and our car rides.  

School

Our homeschool did not place value on regurgitated facts (which is not education at all).   We didn’t use textbooks prior to high school (except in math), we didn’t use workbooks much at all.  We used living books and discussed them thoroughly.  We spent a great deal of time developing speaking skills.  We wrote a great deal.  At age 14, we added formal debate training to help develop skills in logic, argumentation,  thinking on their feet, and looking at both sides of an issue.

Dinner Table Conversations

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Eating meals together as a family (no TV, no radio, no cell phones, no distractions) is of critical importance if you want to develop thinking kids.  An evening meal happens every day – like clockwork.  You can count on it.  By tying this important skill development to a known event, your chances of actually accomplishing it are much higher.  Sure, things happen and sometimes there are outside commitments, but is should be a rare occurrence.  Eating together and learning to think together should be the norm.

Think Generationally

I love the Bible because of the sweep of history found there.  God talks about both blessings and cursings following a family for generations.  He shows how bad choices reverberate down through history.  By grounding your children in the sweep on the Bible, of history, of your own family’s choices through the generations, it is possible to impress upon them the gravity of careful thought.  When we make choices, it’s not just today we are dealing with and not just our own lives.  Therefore, our choices, the result of our thought processes whether faulty or accurate, matter a great deal.

Don’t be Afraid of Challenges

The result of this type of training will probably be children who think well and quickly.  Don’t be surprised when the day comes that they challenge your own thought process.  I love my kids too much to be intimidated by that and have found that this iron sharpening iron has made us all better thinkers and ultimately better people.

********

Are you on our VIP List?  If you would like to receive our newsletter Training for Excellence, be the first to be notified of sales and new classes, and get special updates, click here!

********

{ 0 comments }

Home: A Place of Delightful Discovery, Part 2

by Jeannette Webb on January 17, 2012

 

Home:  A Place of Delightful Discovery, Part 2

By Jeannette Webb

We talked last time about the importance of setting up learning opportunities in the home for younger children.  Now let’s discuss how to capitalize on that.

The Spontaneous Unit Study

By inviting my children to discover the world for themselves, I assumed the responsibility to being ready to deal with their questions when they popped up.  A teachable moment is a precious thing and I always tried to make the most of it.  While our home is loaded with books, I did rotate books in and out so there would always be something fresh.  I also held certain types of books in reserve in my unit study boxes.  Over the course of the year I would find treasures to fill my boxes – books from library sales or homeschool conventions, science kits or themed art projects from museum stores, posters from national parks, documentaries, games, etc.  These unit study boxes were used for planned unit studies as well as for spur-of-the-moment ones.  I’ll give you some examples of how this system worked.

One day my children discovered a badger den, so we pulled out the box on mammals, which contained wonderful books about various types of animals, their homes, and their habitats.  There were posters identifying different Oklahoma wildlife (which went up in the bathroom).  We started the book The Wind in the Willows

After visiting Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, I pulled out my volcano box.  There were books about how volcanoes worked, a picture book about the buried city of Pompeii, some ideas torn from a magazine that featured experiments that replicated a volcano, a National Geographic video, and a poster identifying all the volcanic hot spots around the world.  We set to work understanding all we had just experienced.

My family emigrated from Sweden three generations back and wound up in Oklahoma making the Land Run.  My Swedish box contained a book of native crafts for children, Swedish recipes, maps, children’s books about immigration, Ellis Island, and adjusting to a new country.  When our little family suddenly moved from the farm to the heart of Dallas, the Swedish immigration box went too.  While we were adjusting to a strange new world, we studied how other displaced persons felt, ate the food that my great grandmother would have had in Sweden, made dala horses, studied Swedish customs, read her letters, and tried to let her courage infuse our days.

A Place of Joy

While all this may sound like a random jumble of stuff, it was really a very calm existence filled with little discoveries that were pursued and thoughts that were discussed. Some of our school subjects were very sequential, but each day was rounded out with little surprises that created a joyful learning environment.   Our lives had few extracurricular activities, so there was plenty of time to follow up on things of interest.

My husband and I are curious, industrious people and we wanted to cultivate that in our small children.  It was a lot of work for us to set up situations that allowed them to “stumble upon” something exciting, but I think it was worth it. As young adults, our kids have been wildly successful academically, but it has not been from following the grinding checklist experienced by many of their peers.  Their success has been the result of their curiosity continually propelling them into new territory.  As my daughter recently remarked, “I still love to learn.  That is a fairly rare thing, even on a campus like Princeton.”

Copyright 2010 Home Life, Inc., PO Box 1190, Fenton, MO 63026-1190, (800) 346-6322, www.home-school.com. Originally published in Practical Homeschooling # 96. A Practical Homeschooling subscription is $19.95 for six issues. Used by permission.

********

Are you on our VIP List?  If you would like to receive our newsletter Training for Excellence, be the first to be notified of sales and new classes, and get special updates, click here!

********


{ 0 comments }

9 Ways to Make Home a Place of Delightful Discovery, Part 1

January 10, 2012

9 Ways to make Home a Place of Delightful Discovery, Part 1 By Jeannette Webb Traditional educators would be horrified at my methods.  I hate textbooks, rigid routines, and checklists.  However, I’m not a laid back kind of a gal.  My family will verify that I’m definitely a Type A personality, but with one degree [...]

Read the full article →

A Mother’s Dilemma

January 2, 2012

A Mother’s Dilemma by Jeannette Webb In the fall of 1966 my somewhat frazzled kindergarten teacher met my young mother at the door.  “Mrs. Jones, your daughter was born to lead, but she could go just as far wrong as right.  She’ll either be the leader of the Hell’s Angels or the first woman president [...]

Read the full article →

High School Research

December 19, 2011

High School Research by Jeannette Webb In the early 1980’s, I was an undergraduate conducting social research with one of my professors.  We were breaking new ground as research at that time was reserved for graduate students.  Other professors didn’t know quite what to expect when I presented our results at conferences. How times change! [...]

Read the full article →

Developing Passion, Part 2

December 12, 2011

Developing Passion, Part 2 By Jeannette Webb Last time we talked about the things that can keep a student from developing passion.  This post we look at the things that will open up opportunities for passion to develop. Choosing to Live Purposefully My husband and I made the choice years ago to live a life [...]

Read the full article →

Developing Passion, Part 1

December 5, 2011

Developing Passion By Jeannette Webb Top colleges are looking for students who are passionate. It generally doesn’t matter what they love, but it matters a great deal that they care deeply about something and that they are excited about life.  When you stop to think about it, these are the kind of people who are [...]

Read the full article →

The Best Present to Give Your Kids This Christmas

November 28, 2011

  The Best Present to Give Your Kids This Christmas By Jeannette Webb My son called this morning.  We chatted about his research, what was happening at his church, various small and delightful things.  As the conversation began to slow, my eyes went back to the project waiting on my computer screen.  Maybe I could [...]

Read the full article →

Creating an Environment the Fosters a Love of Learning, Part 2

November 21, 2011

Creating an Environment that Fosters a Love of Learning, Part 2 By Jeannette Webb In the last post we discussed the importance of creating a print rich environment in your home.  Let’s look at other compelling reasons to build a home library. Public Library Shelves are Changing A second reason to purchase your own books [...]

Read the full article →

Creating an Environment that Fosters a Love of Learning, Part 1

November 14, 2011

Creating An Environment that Fosters a Love of Learning Part 1 By Jeannette Webb As a young homeschool mom, I was busy in my son’s room dusting and re-shelving some books one afternoon. After dumping several hundred volumes on his bed, I was called away and promptly forgot all about them.  My eight-year-old son headed [...]

Read the full article →