From the Head of School

 

Most people know what they think. It is far rarer that someone recognises why they think it; quite exceptional to be fully aware how they are thinking it.

Look at the picture below.  A dog, a cow and grass: which is the odd one out?  

Many Westerners learn to associate by category. Their natural answer would be that ‘grass’ is the odd one out; the dog and cow being animals. However, students from east Asian cultures often think first in terms of relationships. They would say cows eat grass; so it is the dog which is the odd one out.

When Americans and Japanese were asked to describe a fish in a tank, Americans were far more likely to describe just the fish (it is big and stripy); Japanese describe the fish in terms of its surroundings (it is in front of the seaweed, to the left of the oxygenator). There is a danger in listing examples of how different cultures think, because cultures don’t actually think at all: people do, and such thinking habits are not genetically determined. Cultures can have tendencies but people have individual experiences: they are born in one place, grow up in another, have parents from different parts of the world, unique educational experiences and above all their own personalities. Some ways of thinking are absorbed through culture, others are explicitly taught. Most obviously, mathematics asks us to think deductively (If x is 2 and y is 3, then x+y must be 5); science, empirically (careful observation and systematic experimentation); humanities, inductively (drawing conclusions from careful examination of evidence); literature, abductively (making connections between ideas and images). Ways of thinking are a tool box, each tool effective in its context. Hammers are brilliant at knocking in nails, less good at extracting screws. In a complex task, we use a range of tools, self consciously selecting them for particular jobs. The same is true intellectually. A scientist is not exclusively observing and experimenting - they extrapolate their results deductively, and communicate their results using metaphors. Being self-aware of thinking (metacognition) is at the core of IB programmes. Grade 5 parents experienced just this at the stay and share this week, when their children explained their artworks in terms of the concepts of connection and form. At the same time, parents of Grade 12s were seeing how this type of education culminates in the IB diploma programme with the Theory of Knowledge course. Knowing what you take for granted doesn’t mean you stop believing in anything. It enriches how you work with others, it supercharges your thinking.