I'm a recovering English teacher, so words are very important to me.
I think there's a huge difference between "helping children to think" and "teaching children to think."
We think. Period. Most of the problems in schools rest on the barriers to thinking implicit in our outmoded concept of teaching - that we tall people (adults) are responsible for children's learning. We need to be more subversive, less subservient to the traditional, 19th-century idea of teacher as authority. Our role is not to perpetuate any system or body of ideas but to challenge everything. We need to model vulnerability for our students, whether short or tall. We need to make a safe place for them to rigorously question our ideas, their ideas, and, basically, thinking in general.
Memorizing is not education. More students are bored than overly-challenged. Let them learn! As long as we take responsibility for their learning, or worse, for their thinking, they have no reason to. I ended that sentence with a preposition. On purpose. Yikes! A sentence fragment! Know the rules, use the rules, and break the rules.
Have fun,
Mac
Stay tuned for Learning Chaos: How Disorder Can Save Education
