EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGE
30th March 1998

In two weeks it is possible to to teach more useful thinking skills than in fifteen years of school and university.

CoRT now available on CD

There are many talented and highly motivated people in education. As a system, however, education - in all countries - is a disgrace. It is a system that exists only to satisfy its own criteria and does a very poor job of serving society.

In the UK students know most of the names of the wives of Henry VIII and even the date of the teaty of Utrecht - but have not the faintest idea as to how the corner shop works. "Value creation in society" should be the most important subject of all - but is never taught.

Literacy and numeracy are taught but the even more important operacy (skill of doing) is never taught.

In Europe, students spend twenty-five percent of their school time on mathematics and yet use less than three percent of this in their lives. To be sure a rocket scientist needs higher mathematics but do a thousand non-rocket scientists have to be taught this in case one of them wants to be a rocket scientist?

'Thinking', the most fundamental of all human skills, is rarely taught explicitly. And when it is taught it is only taught as 'critical thinking' or problem solving. These are only a very small part, indeed, of general thinking skills.

Education is much too important to be left to educators.

Educators only know what is traditional in education not the real needs of the world outside.

A young girl in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, who had been taught the thinking lessons, was asked if she used these lessons outside the classroom. She replied that she used them all the time in real life and "even outside life - in school".

Education is everywhere designed for the top twenty percent who are going to make it to university and a professional life. The other eighty percent are rejects who never make it.

In two weeks it is possible to to teach more useful thinking skills than in fifteen years of school and university.

Susan Mackie, in South Africa, and others, have shown the huge effects of teaching basic thinking skills to illiterate workers. There is a profound effect on their personal lives and on their work lives. These are illiterate workers at the bottom of a platinum mine. Most educators have not the faintest idea of how easy it is to teach thinking skills directly - rather than as a spin off of other subjects. Jennifer Sullivan in Australia taught basic skills to unemployed youths (all of them were deaf) and got a much higher rate of employment than everyone else dealing with normal youth.

The CoRT method, which is by far the simplest and most widely used method for teaching thinking, is now available on CD. This can now be printed out and used by teachers anywhere in the world.

Edward de Bono
29th March 1998