|
|
|
| |
CRYSTALLISATION
The essence of the CoRT Thinking Method is to focus attention directly on different aspects of thinking and to crystallise these aspects into definite concepts and tools that can be used deliberately.
A person in a dark room stumbles over the furniture. As the light improves definite items of furniture become visible. It is now easier for this person to move around and make use of the furniture. The crystallisation of certain aspects of the amorphous process of thinking into definite concepts is a similar process - but an intentional one.
So the general open-minded attitude that involves looking at all aspects of an idea is crystallised into the PMI. With the PMI a student learns to look for the Plus, Minus and Interesting aspects of any idea presented to him or her. The general open-minded attitude is not easy to teach, not easy to learn and not easy to transfer. But doing a PMI is very easy.
Similarly most people believe that they look at all the consequences of all action or a decision but in practice this is rarely the case. To persuade them to look at consequences is at best a lengthy business. To teach them to do a C&S is much easier because a general attitude can now be treated as a definite operation.
Most of thinking takes place in the perception stage and is therefore a matter of directing attention. You cannot direct attention to a general attitude no matter how valuable but you can direct attention to a specific concept/operation and this is even easier if it is converted into an actual tool. The purpose of crystallisation is two-fold. The first purpose is to allow students to look directly at a process as a deliberate tool instead of having to look only at content. The second is to allow them to use process as a (deliberate tool).
TOOLS, NOT ANALYSIS
The crystallisation of different aspects of thinking into definite tools does not follow an analysis of thinking into its component parts. The tools are related to the practical application of thinking and it is this that is crystallised into a tool. Thus the tools may at times overlap.
ARTIFICIAL
It is true that such labels as PMI C&S CAF etc. are highly artificial. But this is deliberate. To crystallise a rather vague intention into a visible tool that can be used deliberately is artificial. If the labels were not artificial they would not work. Phrases like “look at consequences” or “evaluate an idea in terms of positive, negative and interesting features” are too general and too vague. They are also too cumbersome. It is necessary to have something crisp and definite. It is also necessary to have something new, otherwise people will pay no more attention to "looking at consequences" than they have always done.
PERSPECTIVE
The first point to be considered is whether thinking is natural or something that must he taught. Obviously, some thinking is natural otherwise people would never be able to cope with everyday situations. But what about the situations with which people are not familiar? For instance choosing a career is not a situation a student will be familiar with through everyday practice. The purpose of developing thinking as a deliberate skill is to enable a person to apply this skill to new and unfamiliar situations which have to be faced.
Walking is natural and so is running. But athletes train and practice quite deliberately so that they can use their full natural potential. Well-trained athletes will always beat untrained athletes of the same natural ability because their use of energy is more economic and they have more stamina. Similarly the purpose of training in thinking is to make it more focused and more economic and to enable people to tackle problems they would not otherwise be able to tackle.
Soccer players spend hours of practising kicking and passing a soccer ball to each other. However kicking and a hall is fairy natural. The players practice these things so that they can do them accurately and without hesitation when the need arises. The deliberate practice of different aspects of thinking has the same purpose: so that when we need to use these aspects we can do so accurately and without hesitation.
Once you have learned how to swim or ski it all seems very easy. But in order to learn how to swim or how to ski you have to spend some time doing it deliberately. You have to practice your swimming strokes in an artificial manner. You have to practice your stops and turns on skis. In fact in the beginning you may have to practice things which seem very unnatural like leaning outwards on a corner when skiing or submerging your head during part of a swimming stroke. All this may seem boring and unnecessary at the time but the ultimate aim is to make these things second nature to you. Similarly, with the thinking lessons the ultimate aim is to make the procedure second nature to you, but first you have to go through the practice stage.
Tools
The first point has been to show that what seems to be natural can still be improved by direct practice and training. The second point is to show the need for dividing thinking into different operations which are given such artificial labels as PMI, CAF, C&S, etc. These labels have to be looked at as convenience labels. Instead of having to ask people to look at all the consequences of a situation, you can use the short-hand of asking them to do a C&S. In addition, dividing things up and giving them a name makes it easier to pay attention to different parts of a total situation. For instance everyone knows what a horse looks like but it is not easy to discuss a horse with someone unless you know how to pay attention to different parts of it. Otherwise you can only talk about a big horse, a strong horse or a good-looking horse. If, however, you can pick out the withers, the fetlocks, the shoulders, etc., and pay direct attention to them, your knowledge of horses is going to increase. Similarly, thinking is a very general subject that covers many things. It is useful to be able to focus attention on different aspects in order to talk about them and pay attention to them more directly.
In tennis, you make strokes to hit the ball, but you have to practice individual strokes, not strokes in general. For instance, you might practice a backhand slice or a top-spin forehand drive. You might practice a lob, a smash, a first serve or a second serve, etc. As soon as you can distinguish the different strokes from the general intention to get the ball back over the net, then you can practice them directly and acquire skill in using them. In a similar way, people who cannot separate out the different aspects of thinking may feel that they are very good at it, but in practice they are only good at one particular aspect. They may be very good at critical thinking or problem solving but useless at decisions or making plans. So the purpose of the artificial labels is to make it possible to practice the different "strokes" or operations of thinking directly. The labels thus become tools.
Skill
Skill consists of being able to deal effectively with a variety of situations. A skilled wood worker can deal with any number of situations involving wood. Skill depends on being able to recognise the situation and knowing how to deal with it.
The thinking lessons are designed to enable students to recognise situations that require a certain type of thinking operation and to use that operation effectively.
Intelligence
This refers to "innate ability, whether inherited or acquired through early environment. This innate ability is a potential which had to be expressed in an operating skill (such as thinking) to be effective. Thinking is related to IQ as driving a car is related to the car itself. It is a mistake to assume that the more able do not need to acquire thinking skill. Tape recorded discussions and essays show that more able students are indeed more articulate but not especially skilled at ordinary thinking.
There does not seem to be much that education can do about innate abilities (possibly because we define innate abilities as those about which education can do nothing), but education can attempt to develop thinking skill. An increase in this skill can help to make up for deficiencies in the other two areas.
Thinking
The last aspect of this education "trinity," thinking represents the practical use of knowledge for a purpose (or pleasure). Thinking skill is not a substitute for knowledge or IQ, but a way of enhancing them. Well developed thinking skill may make good use of limited knowledge or ability.
Thinking Skill and Ability
The figures shown here illustrate how skill in thinking relates to innate ability. Each figure represents a "scan area" in the mind. A scan area is the field of ideas, images and information that are brought into consciousness by a particular question. With the more able there is a wider scan. There is also a higher density of tracks representing more concepts and more experience. If the answer to the question (indicated by A) falls within this scan, then the more able person reaches it easily. The less able person with the smaller scan does not reach it. In the second situation the less able person has developed methods for directing attention (that is what thinking skill is about), and so reaches the answer as well. In the third situation the answer lies outside the immediate scan area of even the more able person who fails to reach it. But the trained thinker may still be able to reach this answer by directing attention. |
 |
| 1. The answer falls within the larger scan of the more able person. The less able person cannot reach it. |
 |
| 2. The less able person has learned how to direct attention (thinking skill) and can now reach the answer as well. |
 |
| 3. The answer lies outside the scan of the more able person but the less able person may still reach it by directing attention.
|
|
Acquiring the Skill
Some skill in thinking may be acquired naturally through ordinary everyday living - it is not easy to transfer this skill to new situations. Some skill in thinking may be acquired as a spin-off from other subjects - but this tends to be tied to particular information. There is no reason why a deliberate attempt to develop thinking skill by directed practice should not be added to these other methods, especially as experimental results suggest it can be effective.
One advantage of developing thinking skill directly (as a specific subject) is that the skill can be applied to any situation since it has not been developed in a specific knowledge area.
Another advantage of the deliberate method is that it becomes possible to separate thinking skill from ego. This is a very important and difficult matter for only when the separation is effected can we look objectively at thinking. One should be able to say: "My thinking in treat situation was very poor" without condemning oneself as a dunce. The tennis player who says: "My backhand was not working this afternoon" has separated skill from ego.
Thinking is not natural: like swimming or riding a bicycle it becomes natural only after you have learned how. With thinking, however, failure is not as obvious as drowning or falling off a bicycle.
THINKING AND PERCEPTION
If a jury could see clearly whether a defendant were innocent or guilty, it could give its verdict at once. It is in getting to this stage of "seeing clearly" that thinking is involved. We cannot see every situation absolutely clearly, that includes our desires and values, otherwise then there would not have been the need to think.
We need thinking to sort things out, to bring in information, to explore the situation, to look at things in different ways, to challenge our dogmatism, to decide what we want, to choose, etc. Most practical thinking occurs in this perception area of trying to "see things clearly."
Unfortunately when we talk about "thinking" we immediately tend to consider logical sequences, syllogistic argument, mathematical logic, "if P then Q...," and so on. This type of thinking is very valid, but not widely applicable. It is an idealised abstraction which works well only if things can be put in an abstract form suitable for handling in this way. Unfortunately, most things cannot. Mathematics is a wonderful thinking tool and would cover all situations if only we could translate all situations into abstract symbols and relationships. But this needs precision and isolation or post-hoc observation. Most situations are vague, interrelated, subjectively defined and evaluated, and shifting - so we cannot make the initial translation. We also have to act ahead of a situation, not in hindsight. Mathematics and the idealised forms of logic are really second-stage thinking processes that can be applied after the first stage of perception has parcelled things up in a suitable manner. Most ordinary thinking takes place in this first stage.
We can take the example of a couple about to buy a house in a certain area. We can use mathematics to find out what mortgage and insurance they can afford and also to decide the best type. We can use mathematics to work out maintenance costs and extra fares needed for travel. But how do you apply mathematics to such things as the possibility of a job promotion which necessitates having to move; the value of the local schools; the ease of shopping; possible ill health of parents-in-law, etc. Before these things can be considered, they have to be thought of, and that is where the general skill of thinking comes in. You cannot consider some aspect you have not even thought of. Logic and mathematics are part of thinking and certainly the most reliable part, but thinking is much broader than either of them - and it must be usable in all situations.
Thinking has to deal with messy situations in which information is quite incomplete. Thinking is concerned with exploring our own ideas and experience and that of others. All the time the effort is directed towards seeing things so clearly that we know what to think, feel or do at the time. In a way, logic itself is only a device to enable us to see clearly what is implied in the starting assumptions.
TOOLS METHOD
The tools method is simple, but it is very important to understand exactly what is meant by it.
1) The method involves crystallising certain aspects of thinking into definite tools. They are called tools because they can be used in different situations. The tools are independent of the content of what is being thought about.
2) The tools are neutral - they do not give right answers or wrong answers You can look in a direction and see something. or look in that direction and see nothing; what matters is that you are looking in that direction. You can use a hammer to knock in nails or break a shop window: knowing that a hammer exists is what matters.
3) Each tool stands on its own. They are not part of an interlinked hierarchical system. Like tools on a workbench, they are independent, but can be used in a co-ordinated manner to achieve a specific purpose.
In practice, each CoRT Thinking lesson is based on a definite tool. In fact, there is always a double tool. The first tool is easy and its function is to make the second tool necessary. For instance, the first tool may simply involve asking the deliberate question: Where do I start? Once that question has been asked, then the second tool becomes necessary; examining the type of situation and deciding where one wants to end up.
Definite tools of this type are far more effective than exhortation, which has little lasting effect and even less transfer effect. You can acknowledge exhortation with good intentions, but these are not much use until crystallised in a definite form. At first it must seem that the CoRT lesson tools are very deliberate and artificial. It will seem that they simply spell out what tends to be done anyway, and hence are superfluous. Many teachers, for instance, will have run the CoRT 1 lessons without using such deliberate initials as PMI, CAF, C&S, etc. This is a mistake. The deliberate crystallisation of a tool has a definite purpose. That purpose is to separate the tool from its result. This is essential in the teaching of thinking if drift is to be avoided.
The process is very much like training in sports. You could put novice players on a tennis court and tell them to hit a cross-court backhand to land within one foot of the other baseline. You could yell at them whenever their shots went out of court, over the sidelines, dropped short or did not even cross the net. This is teaching by results and is only applicable at a very late stage. The tools method is different. It is not concerned with the results, but simply with exercising the tool. Using this method, the players would first get onto the court and swing a racket about a bit. Then they would try to hit the ball - anywhere. Then they would try to hit it consistently. Next they would try to get it exactly where they wanted it. Finally they might improve their style.
In the CoRT 1 lessons, a number of headings were deliberately set up to enable students to become more sharply and consciously aware of certain directions (factors, objectives, consequences, points of view) in which to move their attention. So the first tool is to say to oneself, "I am now looking for consequences” or "I am now doing a C&S." Once that can be said deliberately then the second tool is to discover what one saw by looking in that particular direction. In this way, the first ten lessons attempt to widen a student's thinking by setting up a number of different directions in which they can direct their attention.
These general tools are a form of structure, but it is an "opportunity structure" (like a hammer, cup, ladder, key) and not a "constraining structure" (like a track, room, cage). The general tools are tools without which thinking tends to drift. The lessons themselves provide a light but definite framework within which to teach thinking as a skill.
Key Benefits
Below are some of the key benefits clients find in using the de Bono thinking tools.
Works-they see results immediately
Simple to learn, use, and implement
Not dependent on others (you can use it by yourself)
Modifies behavior without attacking it
Empowers
Can be used at all levels
Improves cross-cultural interaction
Reduces conflict
Encourages cooperation
Enhances quality of thinking
Supports other change initiatives
Is available worldwide
There is no organisation that will not benefit from training in Edward de Bono's techniques and methodologies. Courses can be tempered for people at different levels in an organisation. Apart from the creative mood that should arise from training the effect will be felt in both vertical and horizontal communication and co-operation in teams and between teams.
Edward de Bono states that 'five hours of instruction in thinking can have more effect on most people's lives than ten years of traditional education'. |
| |
|
|
