Why Johnny Can’t Think – Pt. 9

Thomas Edison once said, “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”  Henry Ford concurred:  “Thinking is the hardest work there is,” he said, “which is probably the reason so few engage in it.”

For example, here’s a little quiz to try on Johnny (or Janie) at home:

1st question … A laundry dryer contains ten black and eight navy socks.  Without looking, how many socks must you take out to be sure you have matched a pair? 

2nd question … A woman from New York married ten different men from that city, yet she did not break any laws.  None of the men died, and she never divorced.  How was that possible?

3rd question … Explain the meaning of this formula:  36b + 52w = 88k.

In the first question, the correct answer is three.  In the second one, the woman was a justice of the peace.  And for the third problem, look real close … It's a shorthand description of a piano – 36 black keys plus 52 white ones.

So how’d they do?  Ironically, none of the above problems require any real level of academic skill.  Each of them, however, do demand a very important intellectual aptitude:  the ability to think.  And according to Edwin Kiester’s research, that is precisely “where American children need help.  Lots of help.”

A report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education sent up the proverbial red flag years ago on this very issue when it told us that only two out of five 17-year-olds could assess basic statements in written form (“Italians are Europeans, John is an Italian.”) and draw a logical inference (“Therefore, John is European.”)

The concerns were only heightened when this story surfaced:  Professor Richard Askey of the University of Wisconsin gave a math problem from a Japanese college entrance exam to 350 freshman math students.  The four-step problem required students to solve one step, then apply the answer to the next, and so forth.  Most of the Japanese students solved the problem, none of the Americans did – and most of them couldn’t get beyond the first step.  They could handle computation, but application blew them away.

So why can’t Johnnie think? Some blame it on what’s happening at home, others on what’s happening at school.  All the evidence, however, points in both directions.  If the electronic drug (all things video) dominates home life, it surely has left its mark on the life of the mind.  No wonder the inventor of the TV said, “I would not let my children near the thing.”  Screen time’s dubious legacy amounts to little more than the mass production of a cultural brainchild that is losing its mind.

Then there’s formal schooling itself.  The first time I read somewhere that one in four high school graduates cannot read their own high school diplomas, I thought skeptically, “Can that be right?”  I eventually discovered it was.  I also discovered that American students typically spend less than one percent of class time in discussions that require in-depth reasoning.  

But while the “experts” are forever scrambling for ways to fix the whole mess, they invariably miss the obvious, i.e., you can’t find the right answers unless you ask the right questions.  And here’s a good one for starters: what was education’s mission for over a millennium?  

Historian David Barton: “Up until about the 1920’s, the emphasis in education was on producing thinkers, not learners.  The idea was that if kids could think, they could learn anything for themselves; but if the focus was on ‘learning,’ they would become gullible and passive, believing everything they heard and read.”

That’s why the thrust of classical education (Aristotelian logic, the Socratic teaching method, reading the Great books, studying Greek and Latin) was always about thinking.  But with Horace Mann in 1838 came the assembly-line approach – a sterile, inhumane system of mass education that stifled young minds much more than it stimulated them.

And now we have a generation of young people who not only can’t think, they don’t even want to.  

So what do we do?  

First, turn off the TV and dramatically reduce screen time.  

Second, replace the present model of progressive education that dominates American public schools with the timeless and proven model of classical education.   

Third, double down on teaching kids how to think, starting at home. Parents are the ultimate factor here because they have ultimate authority and, therefore, bear ultimate responsibility.  In a word, Johnny can’t think without his parents insisting on it.

Brian Schroeder is the former Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, an ordained minister and founder/president of The ChrisCorps Commission (bschroeder081858@gmail.com)