My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
I was saddened to learn of the death this week of a remarkable woman at the age of 106. I never met Kathryn Wasserman Davis, but I was sufficiently moved by her passing to post the following words on my Facebook page: “This is a great loss. Her generosity, her innovative approach to philanthropy, and her idealism, will be missed by the countless young people she has helped and supported.”
She described her Projects for Peace by invoking the words of Gandhi: “I think Gandhi was very smart because he said what people need is to talk more not to their friends, but to their enemies, and that will bring about peace. And that’s what I’m hoping to do.”
To date, Shelby Davis has contributed over $50 million towards educational scholarships. As he explained to me in the living room of my home in Hong Kong, where he and his wife Gail honoured us as guests on several occasions, “For the first 30 years of our lives, we learn; for the second 30 years, we earn; and for the rest of our lives, we return”.
Kathryn and Shelby Davis are wonderful examples of how thinking in innovative ways outside the mainstream can transform our world. As I reflected on their philanthropy this week, an old advertising campaign from a decade and a half ago kept surprising me by flashing into my mind. It was Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” advertising campaign, and despite its grammatical impurity, I have been a huge fan of it for many years.
This one-minute television commercial seemed to capture the very essence of creativity as it featured black-and-white footage of iconic 20th century personalities: Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luthur King Jr, Richard Branson, John Lennon (with Yoko Ono), Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright and Pablo Picasso. If we were re-making the commercial today, we would surely add Steve Jobs to the list.
The commercial and its message certainly worked for Apple. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy when Steve Jobs returned to the company in the late 1990s. With the ‘Think Different’ commercial, a new vision and some innovative new products, the company was saved and went on to become the world’s most valuable corporation.
I showed the video of the “Think Different” commercial to my Theory of Knowledge students a couple of months ago when we were doing a study of propaganda, and they loved it. I asked them why, and several replied that they liked it because they could identify with it.
Excellent! What a great reason!
In several of his publications, including “Learning By Heart” and “Restructuring Schools”, the educator and author Roland Barth urges those of us who work in education to “Think Otherwise”. He asserts that to do so is an obligation, and any teacher who does not “think otherwise” is endangering the future of their students. In Barth’s words, “Thinking otherwise does not necessarily mean thinking big rather than thinking small about good education. It means thinking differently”.
Having corrected Apple’s grammatical shortcoming, it is worth exploring what Barth is trying to say. His concept of “one who thinks otherwise” derives from the word for ‘professor’ used in medieval German universities. Barth encourages school leaders to think outside their normal constraints and parameters, finding creative solutions for problems that others might not even recognise as being problems. It is an approach that appeals strongly to me, maybe as a result of my natural contrarian inclination, but perhaps more as a consequence of my having worked in Jesuit schools for over a decade in my early teaching career. The Jesuits are well-known for challenging the status quo and asking hard questions, especially in the context of forming the whole person – cura personalis – within a spirit of global awareness and a deep concern for justice. It is a philosophy that has taken root deeply in me as an educator.
Within this spirit of questioning, I think it is very healthy for students – and indeed everyone – to be challenged by new and different ideas. It is the essence of challenging assumptions and developing critical thinking skills that I try to nurture in my Theory of Knowledge classes and (to the frustration of some of my colleagues, I suspect) also in my administrative meetings.
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a re-labelling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behaviour modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
Yes, I like the idea of ‘thinking otherwise’, and therefore it staggers me when I hear about this opposition to teaching ‘higher order thinking skills’ because they might challenge a student’s ‘fixed beliefs’ and undermine ‘parental authority’.
Surely challenging a person’s fixed beliefs (which equates to rigid and inflexible ideas) ought to be a worthy goal of education, as education is supposed to form ideas, not fossilise them. Maybe I am different to most people, but I love having my own ideas challenged. It gives me the opportunity either to refine my ideas and improve them, or else to understand more deeply the reasons that I hold those certain ideas and beliefs.
Where would we be today if those people in Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertisement had not sought truth and challenged the status quo? Banning the teaching of critical thinking in schools seems to me at best a recipe for entrenching mediocrity, and worst, acquiescing to the potential for authoritarian dictatorship.
To quote another (perhaps surprising) ‘expert’ in this area of critical thinking, the fourth President of the United States, James Madison: “The principles and modes of governments are too important to be disregarded by an inquisitive mind and I think are well worthy a critical examination by all students that have health and leisure.”
How times change – James Madison was from the forerunner of the same political party that drafted the ‘Knowledge-based Education’ policy that I have cited above. I like to think that Madison would have embraced the concept of ‘thinking otherwise’ just as enthusiastically as I have done.
Thinking (and acting) ‘otherwise’ can be done, and it can be done to bring immense positive benefits. We have only to see the examples of Kathryn and Shelby Davis, and the innovative hi-tech creativity of Ben and Marco.
In one of his articles on the subject of ‘thinking otherwise’ in the journal ‘Phi Delta Kappan’, Roland Barth offers this advice to school leaders: “We CAN work to change the embedded structures so that our schools become more hospitable places for student and adult learning. But little will really change unless we change OURSELVES. Let go of the trapeze. Think otherwise. Become an independent variable… Make your presence felt. Leave your mark on your school – and have some fun – while this window of opportunity is admitting fresh breezes. For soon it will close.”
POSTSCRIPT 1: For a brilliant example of how “thinking otherwise” can raise students’ performance, I encourage you to read an article that was shared with me by one of Awty’s parents this week. The link is http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-04/why-i-let-my-students-cheat-their-game-theory-exam. I won’t say any more about it at the the moment – please just read it and ‘think otherwise’.
POSTSCRIPT 2: There is a very touching story of Steve Jobs’ act of “Thinking Differently” at http://davidgelphman.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/2-letters-from-steve/. Yes, there are times when the rules ought to be bent, and those times are when justice and compassion need a little help to triumph over the power of ruthless authority, profit or legalism.
POSTSCRIPT 3: Finally, to share some good fun with some of our confident, articulate and curious Lower School students, please have a look at the Houston Rockets website at http://www.nba.com/rockets/itsnotcomplicated. The default video clip is not the destination - click on each of the five videos under the main video to see some Awty students in animated conversation with Calvin Murphy, parodying the popular commercials that were recently released for AT&T.
Think Different, Think Otherwise
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Last weekend, Dianne and I took a short drive through the hill country west of Houston to admire the wildflowers.