Give a man a thought…

I often hear teachers (in the most general, not strictly professional, sense) and others complain about our educational system’s failure to teach people to think. Viz. specifically this rant by the venerable[!] Dr Edsger Wybe Dijkstra.

But in my analysis of such sentiments, I’m forced to ask, how does one person teach another to think? That is, how can I convince another person not to accept at face value what I or someone else says, and instead analyze, break down, understand and reconstruct the knowledge being communicated?

This is an earnest question; I’ve never yet found a way to do it, despite years of trying. It’s also an important question, as the oft-stated goal of education is to teach people to think and deduce and discover for themselves, not to blindly follow the rubrics they’ve been handed.

Give a man a thought, you teach him for a day. Teach a man to think…