Questioning assumptions related to basic education might lead to some big improvements in quality of learning!

Some creative value-focused thinking going on in Finland: http://qz.com/367487/goodbye-math-and-history-finland-wants-to-abandon-teaching-subjects-at-school/

Why we do basic education? Because we want our children to learn skills and gain knowledge about different phenomena.

Some people seem to have been thinking about the useful question: Why teach by subject? 

“Finland is considering its most radical overhaul of basic education yet—abandoning teaching by subject for teaching by phenomenon.”

And arrived at some conclusions:

Improve your creativity - begin with why

The obvious solutions to most problems have already been found. However, they are often based on assumptions that do not hold. 

The question 'Why?' is an effective means to questioning those assumptions.

Two main types of assumptions are: 

• Assumptions about values, objectives, goals - the reasons behind doing things.
• Assumptions about how the world works. Whenever you ask “why should we assume that?” or “why is that so?” and do not get a satisfactory response, there might be something wrong with those assumptions.

It’s not hard to create something but it can be very hard to be creative. In the sense, that you would develop something novel, feasible and useful. I believe that using the question 'Why?' more would help us at achieving this creativity.

Illustration:

Question:  “Why should the lecturer use powerpoint slides?”

Response: “Because that is how lectures are given, to give visual learning aid for students, to provide easily accessible course material, to have a structure for what he is going to present” etc.

Q: “Why lectures have to be given that way?”

R: “Ehm…?”

Creativity point: Lecture do not have to be given that way. What is more, giving lectures is actually not an objective at all. It is just one possible way to try and achieve learning.

Q: “Why is it important to give visual learning aid?”

R: “Because it makes learning cognitively easier”

Creativity point: OK. What other means there would be to deliver even better visual learning aid for the students? Could the lecturer use more informative pictures?

People tend to make quick assumptions intuitively and to accept the narrow framing they are given. This might have been necessary in our evolution so that we could survive. However, stepping out of this 'System 1 thinking' might enable you to be more creative.

My advice is to start using the question 'why' more often. Use it until you understand what you are dealing with. After this, you should be equipped to come up with creative solutions.

Me discussing creativity with value-focused thinking at
Systems Thinking Applied meeting in Ruoholahti.

Structuring decisions: Should electromagnetic hypersensitivity be acknowledged as a medical condition caused by electric fields?

I examine the question whether Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) should be acknowledged as a medical condition caused by electric fields (EFs) or not.

Figure 1 shows my attempt to structure my thinking about this topic using a decision tree technique. In rest of the post, I explain my thoughts about this decision tree. This type of exercise can help to clarifying thinking, to guide collection of facts and to help at communicating the decision. You can find conclusions at the end of this post.

Figure 1: Decision tree about whether EHS should be acknowledged as medical condition or not. Squares are decision nodes, in which a decision can be taken. Circles are chance nodes where one of the states will be realized. Triangles are consequence nodes.