In two week's time there will be meeting up with me in Malta people from all over the world who have been involved in teaching and training my methods. They will be coming from Australia, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.A., Canada, all over Europe etc.
Quietly, around the world there is a growing realisation that thinking is rather important. There is a realisation that more and more information does not itself provide value. The information age is over - even Bill Gates seems to be realising that. Value creation is the key need.
Value creation needs constructive, creative and design thinking.
Yet the whole thrust of education has always been on analysis and judgement. Wonderful as these are, they are also totally insufficient in a rapidly changing world.
Not so long ago I was interviewed on TV in a certain country and the interviewer said: "We are so tired of 'isms' - capitlaism, marxism, fundamentalism etc etc. What you are doing to teach thinking to ordinary people may in the end be more important than any 'ism'."
There is a lot of old fashioned rubbish talked and taught about the teaching of thinking - particularly in the U.S.A. Just describing aspects of thinking and then teaching these is virtually useless.
That is why I prefer the 'tools' method which gives operating skills. Attitudes never last - tool skills do.
Some of the most able and hardworking of those teaching my methods are making incomes of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They deserve it because they work hard.
Thinking is not a skill reserved for the highly intelligent or the super-educated. Susan and Donalda and other colleagues have shown that thinking can be taught to the totally illerate with powerful effects. At the other end of the scale, new thinking skill can reduce meeting time of the most senior executives to one quarter or even one tenth.
A few people are beginning to realise just how old fashioned and limited our traditional thinking habits are. Newer thinking habits will make more difference to more people in the world than the whole computer industry.
Welcome to those who are coming to Malta in August.
I am writing this from Singapore. Singapore is a remarkable country with a huge will (and ability) to move forward. They have performed miracles in so many areas such as housing where the HDB is a model for the rest of the world. Every year I am invited to speak to hundreds of top public servants through the Civil Service Institute - again a model for others. In education they started early with the teaching of thinkinbg - but then it sort of got bogged down and messed up with more complicated and less effective methods. This is a pity because children in Singapore are eager to learn thinking directly - as we know from the school run by the Lows. The Chinese High School, a leading school in Singapore, is also a keen user of the methods. For example they are heavy users of the parallel thinking of the Six Hats method. The Minister of Education is also both motivated and enlightened in these matters. But somewhere in the bureaucracy of the education systems things got messed up - there is the usual bureaucrat's preference for complexity over effective simplicity. Or, perhaps, they are just badly advised. A pity because Singapore deserves better.
Edward de Bono
in Singapore
19th July 1998
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