PonderEd Education
Human brains have all the following brain functions. However, depending on the individual, some can exploit higher levels while others are biased to lower brain functions.
I. Basic Instinct (The most basic brain function)
The basic instinct is the desire for survival and reproduction. It is the essential component of all life forms. Emotions primarily process information gained by the five senses.
Examples: Sexual desire, desire for delicious food, etc.
Communication methods: Signals
Education focus: None
II. Goal-oriented thinking process
More knowledge leads to faster and more accurate judgement. The goal-oriented thinking process is suited for making the right and good judgement. So, the goal-oriented thinking process can also be called knowledge-based judgment. In this thinking process, knowledge plays an essential role. Without any information, good and proper judgement cannot be made. Since proper judgement is vital for everyday life and people make judgement every moment, human brains strongly desire knowledge. This is why children ask questions to gain knowledge spontaneously.
The goal-oriented thinking process heavily relies on social interactions since sharing knowledge increases survival chances. Thus, the members in the same social groups share information to achieve the goals together.
The best way to accumulate knowledge is through experiences. Even if this is a primitive brain function, most educational organizations focus on ‘delivering knowledge’.
Examples: Pufferfish have poison(knowledge). – Do NOT eat(judgement).
Communication methods: Various signals (delivering knowledge does NOT require language., Imagine that soldiers communicate by signals during operation.)
Education focus: Experiences and knowledge. Use competition (e.g. exams) to enhance outcomes.
Teaching: Focus on delivering knowledge, accuracy is the key in education (exams to check the accuracy of knowledge).
Learning: Memorize and practice the learning materials.
III. Objective-oriented thinking process (Knowledge-based Decision, The beginning of the thinking process)
Social interaction increases the chances of survival and reproduction. However, it can also cause problems and anomalies, which force the brain to initiate a thinking process to resolve the issue. To find a solution to the problem, the brain has to go through a series of thinking processes that include observation, data collection, and analysis, just like the goal-oriented thinking process. However, the focus is completely different.
The goal-oriented thinking process focuses on methods to achieve the goals. Knowledge and experience are the foundation of the thinking process to achieve the goals. On the other hand, the objective-oriented thinking process focuses on reasoning before coming up with solutions. The problem is that knowledge and experiences cannot be used to identify the reasoning since they are new and unknown. If the reasoning is known, the goal-oriented thinking process can solve the problem quickly. When the destination is unknown, knowledge and experiences could be an asset but not essential. Thus, something new is needed. That is what PonderEd uses the term ‘Concept’ for. The ‘concept’ is an advanced form of knowledge and experience.
The objective-oriented thinking process thus has two different components: 1. Thinking process to identify the reasoning (causation), and 2. Thinking process to come up with solutions (goal-oriented thinking process).
The goal-oriented thinking process is what the current education system is aiming for, but it is not very successful.
Example: To catch fish, observe, collect data, and analyze to identify reasoning (causation), then apply fishing technique based on the reasoning (goal-oriented thinking process).
Communication methods: Mix of signals and language, mix of knowledge and concepts.
Education focus: problem-solving, troubleshooting, prediction based on conclusion, etc.
Teaching: Teaching learners the knowledge with reasoning (e.g. delivering a set of knowledge that are connected to each other.)
Learning: Memorize and practice
IV. Critical thinking
The reasoning is circumstantial. As conditions change, the reasoning could also change. The objective-oriented thinking process starts with problems to solve. Thus, the thinking process of identifying reasoning is still locked on the solution. This limitation prohibits the brain from thinking freely to explore other conditions. This is where critical thinking begins.
Critical thinking focuses on factors that change the reasoning. In other words, the relative relationship between reasoning and circumstances is the topic of thinking. Let’s take a look at this with an example. A person walks on a trail and finds a cat hunting a baby rabbit. The person feels uncomfortable about the baby rabbit being hunted, so chases the cat away. The next day, the person found that baby cats of the same cat from yesterday suffered from hunger. One event affects another, as in a chain reaction. In a situation like this, it will be challenging to determine what is right and what is wrong.
Critical thinking is the process of following the concepts that are connected. Whoever makes more logical connections overpowers others. More importantly, the value of knowledge and experiences is minimal. But ironically, critical thinking allows the brain to gain concepts and indirect experiences. The thinking process of making connections between concepts and the process of evaluation while making connections brings theories(knowledge) and experiences from others. Thus, brain power can grow faster and stronger than any other thinking processes discussed before.
Unfortunately, the current education system cannot deal with this. It doesn’t have systematic strategies for teaching students to develop critical thinking; only a few individuals do.
Example: Following the link of ‘increased tariff’ impacts on employment, economy, production, etc.
Communication methods: Language with concepts
Education: No pedagogies
Teaching: Only a few people can teach critical thinking. One might provoke critical thinking, but this does not mean the person can teach critical thinking. To teach critical thinking, the person has to understand how the critical thinking process is carried out in the brain. (Compare that geniuses can think creatively, but they cannot teach the next generation to think like them.)
Learning: There are no ways to learn in the current education system.
V. Type I Creative thinking
The conceptualization of knowledge and experiences adds another level of thinking processes to the human brain: creative thinking. Knowledge and experience have almost nothing to do with creative thinking. The factors initiating creative thinking are curiosity and questions. Curiosity can only be turned on by conceptualizing observation and knowledge.
PonderEd categorizes creative thinking into two types (Type I and II). The foundation of Type I creative thinking is the same as critical thinking (observation, analysis, conclusion). However, creative thinking differs in many aspects. One of them is observation. Critical thinking is based on problems/anomalies. Type I creative thinking is recognition of patterns (V-shape flying pattern of gees)/similarities and differences (bare legs vs. feather-covered legs of birds in winter season) with curiosity and questions. Since curiosity and questions are essential components, creative thinking is a completely different thinking process from the critical thinking process. Two of the essential thinking processes are: 1. Translation of concepts; 2. Concept connection.
Type I creative thinking can discover new knowledge, technologies, and many more novel discoveries or inventions. It is the starting point of a new chapter in human history.
Example of translation: V-shape flying pattern to fighter jets flying pattern.
Example of concept connection: Phone + Music + Internet = iPhone, Unix + Mac OS = OS X, etc.
Education: No education
Teaching: no pedagogy
Learning: no ways to learn in the current education system.
VI. Type II creative thinking
This thinking process is for geniuses. It starts with observation-based curiosity and questions. Observation sparks curiosity, which translates into questions. Then, thinking processes to find answers follow. The thinking process to answer the curiosity questions follows the same information processing steps as type I creative thinking—analysis, hypothesis, conclusions, predictions, and discussions. However, there is one additional brain function that is unique to type II creative thinking. It is the capability of simulation.
The barriers to provoking type II creative thinking are: 1. Turning on curiosity; 2. Translating curiosity into questions and changing questions to explore; 3. Simulation of relative relationship among concepts connected.
Examples: Isaac Newton’s artificial satellite concept and Albert Einstein’s general relativity theory.
Education: No education, not teachable nor learnable. Geniuses could not pass on their thinking process to the next generation.
Note: A higher thinking process can govern the thinking processes at the lower level. For example, type II creative thinking governs all lower-level brain functions. However, the type I creative thinking process cannot automatically be advanced to type II creative thinking. As such, critical thinking cannot jump to any creative thinking spontaneously. This means that if a person uses brain function focused on knowledge-based judgement mainly, they cannot perform critical and creative thinking.
Most humans can use knowledge-based judgment brain functions with some biases, and the current education system is focused on this level of brain function. Finding people who can provoke critical thinking is very challenging even today. As human history shows, the number of people who can exploit creative thinking is even rarer. The reason is that pedagogies for critical and creative thinking have not yet been developed. PonderEd is the only education provider for these higher levels of brain functions.