Thinking is Tricky Business

Thinking is tricky business. Emotions like angst, anguish, denial, and deliriousness can impact how we think. Hunger, cold, satiation and warmth can affect what we think. Too much pinot noir might pick away at our ability to think.

If thinking is tricky business, what must teaching people to think be? In a university classroom on any given evening, some of the above factors and scores more affect what and how professors teach people to think.

My colleague Bill Cutler, Professor of History and Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, put teaching people to think like this: "We professors are arguers rather than advocates. Advocates often trade in belief or opinion. Professors trade in presenting viewpoints and information in a way that relies on reason and evidence consistent with a particular discipline. We have knowledge of what others say on a subject and a healthy skepticism for conventional wisdom. We turn answers into questions and have a sharp eye for unrecognized assumptions. We are willing to ask the "so what" question."

"So what?" is not meant to be a demeaning question. Rather, it’s a tool to help students investigate an idea. "So what" means "what’s next?" and "how does this affect your thoughts on that?"

As a professor at a state university, I have taught in minute detail what is required to commit an enormous number of crimes.

I have taught under what circumstances a 14 year old child may leave her parents’ home and rely on the state to support her.

I have taught business students how to lend money to purchase a home, and to then require the borrower to repay two to three times the amount that was borrowed.

I have taught the exact number of days a person in control of a company must wait to buy or sell certain publicly traded stocks of that company in order to personally profit at the expense of other stockholders.

And, I have taught my students to think about these matters, to consider "so what" if the homeowner pays too much for the home–what happens to the market? What is the impact on bankruptcy filings or on the ability of the homeowners, if they have children, to attend school events rather than work a second job? Who pays if the homeowner defaults?

There exists tremendous pressure on universities and faculty to teach "how to" instead of "what if." It’s a legitimate pressure, particularly in Alaska where our university system is relied on to train the workforce. But it’s a dangerous pressure, too, because higher education can become viewed as just another economic tool, subject to adjustment as we need new workers for new endeavors. What a sad day it will be for Alaska when all of our young people are trained to do the jobs that others bring to the state and none are trained to think about the jobs that need to be done. What a sad day it will be for Alaska when our workforce can do some of the best nursing or flying or engineering in the world, but no one can write a song, or envision the extraction of a yet-to-be identified resource.

We must keep a keen eye out for those who would attempt to confuse thinking with data, because thinking is so much more than information, so much more than knowledge, and thinking can be taught with the simplest of social, political, mathematical, or economic models. But thinking cannot be taught if we spend all of our time teaching information.

Most of us can remember what we said during a heated discussion, and what we should have said. We’re less articulate when recounting what another said. One of the reasons professors teach unpopular viewpoints in detail is to encourage students to think about and carefully state the reasons for the more popular belief. Another is to get students to take a walk down the less traveled path. And come back to report on what was there. Fifteen pages due in three weeks. It’s a great trick.