- The document discusses different types of thinking and ways to improve thinking skills. - It introduces the "Six Thinking Hats" method for separating types of thinking - white for information, red for emotions, black for criticism, yellow for benefits, green for creativity, and blue for process control. - Each hat represents a role and allows the thinker to focus on one type of thinking at a time rather than trying to do too many things simultaneously. This helps avoid confusion and makes thinking more effective.

1. Teach your child how to think Edward de Bono presented by Shimakameli 1

3. Information and thinking

4. Intelligence and thinking

5. Reactive and proactive thinking

6. Critical thinking

7. Creative thinking

8. Lateral thinking2

10. When knowledge is complete there is no need for thinking.

11. For creativity, design, enterprise and doing anything new, we need thinking.

12. Information is not enough. We do need thinking as well. We need thinking in order to even better use of information.3

14. intelligence trap Many highly intelligent people often take up a view on a subject and then use their intelligence to defend that view. Since they can defend the view they never see any need to explore the subject or listen to alternative views. 4

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18. Pro-active thinking: real life involves a great deal of ‘pro-active’ thinking. This means going out and doing things. (All the information is not given- you have to find it.)

19. It is not the fault of education that pro-active thinking is not so easy to handle as the reactive thinking. But it is the fault of education to suppose that reactive thinking is sufficient.7

21. Many schools believe that is sufficient to teach critical thinking. They do this because it fits in with the usual emphasis on reactive thinking and also the traditional view of thinking.

22. In addition to critical thinking we need thinking that is constructive and creative.

23. Criticism is very much easier than creation.

24. Critical thinking is a process of thinking.8

27. Creative thinking is product of thinking, which produce original ideas9

29. Lateral thinking is a skill for changing concepts and perceptions.

30. Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the true value of statements and seeking errors. Lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement value of statements and ideas. A person would use lateral thinking when she/ he wants to move from one known idea to creating new ideas10

32. Bad attitudes:Thinking is not important. Gut feeling is all that matters. Thinking is boring and confusing and never gets anywhere. I find all problems too difficult. Thinking is only for academics and intellectuals. I find thinking very easy. You just look at something and make up your mind about it. I find that I am always right. I have no trouble defending my ideas. The main purpose of thinking is to prove that those who disagree with you are wrong. There is one right answer and anyone who can not see it must be stupid. 11

34. Attitudes about the nature of thinking Thinking should be constructive, not negative. Explore a subject instead of arguing about it. The other party in an argument usually has something useful and constructive to say, if you make the effort to pick this out. People with differing points of view are usually right according to their own special perception. Do not be afraid to try out ideas. At any point of thinking there may be alternatives that you have not yet thought of. Avoid dogmatism even when you do feel that you are right. 13

36. The six thinking hats is a method for doing one sort of thinking at a time.

37. The six-hats method is really an attention -directing tool, because it directs our attention towards certain aspects and towards a certain type of thinking.(red hat feeling)

38. The example for six thinking hats operation is full- color printing on paper.14

40. Hats can easily be put on and taken off. A hat is not permanently attached to you.

41. The hats are not categories. Instead of labeling people and putting them into boxes the hats are there to encourage people to use all types of thinking.15

46. Feelings are a very important part of thinking. Feelings come into thinking all the time. We seek to be objective but are rarely objective. In the end all choices or decisions are based on feelings.

47. Feelings are valuable so long as we label them as feelings. The red hat provides a clear label.17

49. The black hat is concerned with truth and reality. It is the hat of critical thinking.

51. The yellow hat is looking forward into the future, and also looking backwards into the past.

52. If we do this, then these benefits will arise…..

53. This thing happened, there were some good effects…..18

55. Both the black hat and the yellow hat are forms of judgment.

56. Both hats have to be entirely logical. With both hats there have to be strong reasons for what you say.

57. If there are no reasons you should be using the red hat, because a statement without reasons is a feeling or intuition.19

60. What other possible explanations might there be?

61. The white hatlays out the information. The red hatallows feelings to be put forward. The black and yellow hats deal with logicalassessment. So it falls to the green hat to be the action hat under which ideas are put forward.20

63. The blue hat is the overview. It is the process control. with all the other hats we think about the subject matter, but with the blue hat we think about our thinking.

64. What has happened?

65. What is happening?

66. What should happen next?21

68. Even a single thinking habit or tool taken from this comprehensive book may strongly affect the future of your child. Teach your child how to think. Do not wait for school to do it. 23