Why Think?

Why Think?

[Author's Note: This text is taken from the current draft of "Why Can't America Think?" This book is being written to document the problems and solutions of science education in the United States. I encourage anyone reading this text and those that will follow to comment on and improve this book. I look forward to this effort to improve our country and the world. This is the preface to the book.]

What a bizarre question! Doesn't everyone think? Isn't that exactly what brains are for? Don't we think every time we make a decision?

The answer is that everyone doesn't think. Even fish and birds have brains but don't really do much, if any, thinking. Most decisions are made based on feelings, not thought.

Yet, we do muddle through and may live very nice lives doing things just as we wish. Very many people leave the thinking to the thinkers. Why burden yourself with the study necessary for being a philosopher or scientist or engineer?

The world has changed. To have a better standard of living, you must have better training. To advance to higher-paying jobs in your profession, you must do more than just your job, narrowly defined, well. The extra pieces required to advance generally include communication skills and thinking.

In addition, nations now find themselves in greater competition than ever before. To achieve a good life for its people, a nation must train those people to compete against those who are also being trained to compete. This battle will not be won by those who deliver packages or make fast food or sell clothing in retail stores. It will be won by those who operate at a higher level creation and discovery. Without sufficient numbers of well-educated people, a nation will settle into a lower level of success.

These two selfish reasons for improving education miss another very important issue. In a modern society, companies seek to sell you all sorts of stuff – and politicians sell themselves. You're being constantly bombarded with messages designed to reach the parts of your brain uninvolved in thinking. You're being asked to buy based on sexual attraction, beauty, power, social acceptance, and the like. Almost always, the product or service being offered delivers none of these things or delivers it less well and at higher cost than alternatives.

If you can think, then you provide three benefits: better jobs for yourself, greater contributions to your society, and the ability to dissect messages from vendors so that you can optimize your life and not be taken in by marketing schemes designed to pick your pocket.

We should all wish to have better thinking skills and should very much wish for our children to have even better ones. Some parents work hard to help their children learn to think, but most depend on their schools to perform these tasks. Today, as indicated in a number of studies, our schools are letting us down.

Training in thinking is too important for our children and the nation's children to let such a situation stand. There's been much heat and light expended on improving education over the last 40 years, but little in the way of real results. This book opens up some new ideas for improving our educational system so that we can climb to the top once again without expending vast amounts of blood and treasure. Those expenditures will doom us, but using our heads well will give us the best of all worlds.

I've taken a personal approach to this book and relate my own experiences along with the words of some very smart people to deliver a prescription for change. In my mind, much of what we must do for education can be deduced from rather simple principles. I hope that you'll agree and begin to work in your own communities to change how we do education.

© 2011 by Harry E. Keller., Manhattan Beach, CA U.S.A.
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