Edward De Bono

Educational leaders who sometimes become icons emerge from around the globe. Edward De Bono was born on the small island of Malta attended the University of Malta, and became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford

He earned degrees in psychology and physiology, an M.D., and two Ph.D.’s. In 2005, de Bono was nominated for a Nobel Prize in economics. Countries, organizations, and businesses have awarded numerous honors to de Bono for his contributions to humanity. His ideas on thinking and creativity work well for everyone from preschoolers to corporate executives of international organizations. Sixty-two of his books have been translated into more than 35 languages. He has worked with senior management teams at international companies to solve problems with creative solutions, developed an institute for new world thinking, and held teaching appointments at Harvard, Oxford, London, and Cambridge universities.

In 1972, de Bono established the Cognitive Research Trust to teach thinking skills to young people, and these thinking lessons appear in schools around the world. Lateral thinking and creative thinking have established de Bono’s worldwide reputation as an authority on and innovator of teaching and practicing thinking skills. de Bono’s (1992) ideas show thinking skills can develop through two avenues, (1) a desire to think of a new way, a different way, a simpler way, or a better way, and (2) a desire to solve a problem.

DELVE into the theory.

de Bono’s, (1973) Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, encouraged readers to see the lost potential in just using logic, coded systems, preset patterns, and vertical thinking. de Bono proposed that, “A system that can create its own patterns and recognize them is capable of efficient communication” (p.28). Once the mind contour relies on patterns, the patterns usually direct the flow of ideas. Although patterns can be helpful in learning a new skill or task, people who have remained in a thinking rut have difficulty with creativity and approaching challenges that need different solutions.

According to de Bono, (1973) students who have a limited attention span also have a passive self-organizing ability. What is activated in a passive learner is the most familiar route and set of patterns. Teachers can benefit from studying de Bono’s concepts about lateral thinking because they need to move students out of passive learning and into active learning to meet 21st-century challenges. Attention grabbers are most valuable when they do more than just startle—when they actually lead to a learning experience or exercise of new thinking.

In guidelines, frameworks, objectives, and class management, teachers study, practice, invent and use various means of communicating purpose in lessons. The ‘why’ behind the lesson, the value of the skills, and the possible uses in the future can help students to focus on the lesson and to feel more motivated to learn. Passive learners and thinkers may know how to read, but they do not master the predatory reading abilities: skimming, scanning, close reading, and hard reading (Hjortshoj, 2009). Active learners and thinkers use varied methods to read and digest the material.

de Bono provided the idea of perspectives, looking across a learning experience or challenge from a different perspective, whether trivial or awesome, to move students into more active thinking. Lateral thinking engages students in diverse thinking skills jarring them out of the ruts of past patterns or restrictions of vertical options. Change challenges thinking skills. Creative efforts stretch abilities. As de Bono noted, the difficulties students have solving open-ended problems include problems teachers see every day when students confront open-ended writing assignments. Difficulties, stalling, or blocks to a course of action occur when any learning tasks call for a starting point, modifications, change, revisions, and new perspectives.

INVESTIGATE possible strategies and applications.

In proscribed rote learning situations, one does not practice creative sequencing or perspectives. Teaching students to develop active creative thinking abilities requires strategies suited to a wide variety of learning styles and challenges. Pedersen (2002) found de Bono’s ideas worked to transform learning for her elementary students. After just a short time of studying and practicing thinking concepts such as randomness, changes, combinations, and reversals, Pederson’s students grew in analyzing, describing, and reflecting abilities.

Sloane (2006) affirmed the method advocated by de Bono for corporate cultures ready to develop more creative approaches. Martin (2009) summarized the potential for creative thinking in the 21st century as essential to advances, innovations, and efficiency. Collaboration, communication, and creativity stand as essentials of business in person and with digital tools.

In more than two decades of teaching English language learners in California public schools, Esquith, (2009) discovered that comprehension and confidence grow with experiences that help change students’ patterns of thinking. In the schools where Esquith worked many teachers had fallen into a negative thinking pattern regarding the disadvantaged and at-risk students in their classrooms. Esquith established a classroom-based on helping students move from neighborhood limitations to decoding the world of academics. Esquith empowered students to think differently, create, advance, and contribute positively. The lateral thinking described by de Bono (1973) blossoms with active involvement in learning. Learning activities that ignite inductive, deductive, and creative thinking enable active learning.

Willax (2006) highlighted the ways logic can inhibit creativity and encouraged people to bypass their regular brain patterns when trying to develop a project or solution. Often teachers and parents work hard to teach children patterns. Willax agreed with de Bono's theory that rote processes inhibit creativity. The 21st-century world needs creative individuals who can see a challenge from different perspectives. Creative problem solvers bring perspectives that can improve environments. Affirming the need for knowing processes and patterns does not have to trap students in rote work. Teachers need to work to encourage exploration, collaboration, and creativity.

GENERATE ideas.

de Bono (1973) recommended learning activities that foster insight, stimulate creativity, and allow for humor. For the youngest students, visual aids build understanding and guide expression. Older, more sophisticated students may work with abstract concepts. Training students to broaden thinking approaches in a classroom setting causes them to see a connection and to value a change of thinking patterns as a new skill. de Bono encouraged teachers to have students practice with a variety of materials; this will cause different thought processes to occur.

de Bono (1973) suggested that lateral, creative, and divergent thinking can emerge through the use of many items: cardboard shapes, photographs, newspapers, magazines, drawings, designs, student writing, speeches, conversations, world problems, local problems, school problems, design problems, innovation challenges, organization, closed problems, (problems that do have a definite answer), everyday life problems, thematic subjects, anecdotal narratives, life experiences, poetry, and songs. Each of these provides items for a teacher to stockpile in order to have a supply of materials to provoke thinking.

Educators should choose to work with verbal material, in speeches or writing, that has a clear point of view. Clear views provoke more thinking and discussion than a vague blurb or general article. de Bono (1991) claimed, “If the expectation is clear and the time is short, the mind needs to remove the will she/won’t she uncertainty” (p.140).

Have students create a list of inventions that changed the world.
Discuss how one might create something they have never seen in action.
See how many inventions were completed by individuals and how many

were created in collaborations. Discuss the pros and cons of working alone

and working with others.

Have students examine a list of charitable organizations, non-governmental organizations, or efforts arising from citizens to make their communities or lives better in some way. Examples include Doctors without Borders. Nurses without Borders. The Salvation Army. The World Central Kitchen.The International Red Cross. Amity Foundation, and UNICEF.
Have students trace the steps of a humanitarian organization that works in

their country to make life better for needy groups. Research who started the

organization and why. Affirm the fact that any of them could grow

into the knowledge and skills they need to start an organization that would

make life better for people.

Choose a speech by a humanitarian that students recognize and admire.
Have students search for new companies or organizations that contribute

new ideas for helping people.

Choose a speech by a leader in any field that shows the qualities you are

trying to encourage.

Have someone in the school community who students admire come in to

tell their personal story of how they developed their values or their choices

in contributing to the community.

Choose video clips of people working to help others in creative ways.

The more valuable and important the topic, the more students will have an inclination to expend energy examining and discussing the topic. Francois and Zonana (2009) found students want to overcome limitations but need help in decoding the elements necessary in a world of powerful people who judge potential on language abilities. “Code-switching,” described by Francois and Zonana, (2009, p.9) requires teachers to lead students through a conscious process of switching between different language styles and patterns. Helping students to understand that different contexts require different language that stimulates ideas for new avenues for thought, writing, and speaking.

Communication transfers ideas, and language is the most common mode for provoking thought. Communication can be one or two way, or even multiple voices shouting in competition for attention or inspiring others through establishing a beautiful harmony. Patterns in thinking take hold through actions, reactions, and arrangements. People create their own communication codes. If no codes are provided for them to decipher, the human mind wanting to have patterns and systems of organization will try different routes (de Bono, 1973). Changing patterns in language experiences stimulates a wide range of thinking skills as students look for what they recognize, compare, analyze, infer, and evaluate the new elements.

Pattern changes requiring code-switching can be as simple as changing initial letters: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat. Pattern changing can also sing a simple repetitive song like Old MacDonald Had a Farm, and after singing several verses with farm animals, switch and put a jungle animal into the song. Reactions and discussions will be varied and engaging. Some students will want to return to farm animals and some will see the fun of putting even more extremely different creatures into the Old MacDonald song. For older, more adept students, a discussion of language patterns according to social mores with role-playing of typical and then surprising questions or responses will stimulate thinking and discussion.

ENTER slowly into new practices.

How does learning take place? Different people name various practices and theories to answer this question. Teachers should move carefully when introducing new thought practices and activities. In 1985, de Bono presented a method called, “Six Thinking Hats,” to develop new thinking patterns and to increase productivity in any challenging thinking task. Teachers interested in advancing thinking skills would do well to study the, “Six Hats Method,” (de Bono, 1985, p. xi). By using the convenience of the symbolic hats to teach new thinking approaches and skills teachers provide a visual stimulus to students. de Bono claimed the Six Hats Method helped participants focus on what could happen rather than just on what currently exists. Focusing on everything one encounters on a journey of learning will teach more than just judging who is right or wrong.

Terms and actions, such as thinking about systems, how something is organized, how it has evolved from its first form in society, or how the changes in the organization or system occurred, help students to think outside their own established patterns. Analyzing standard situations, designing a path forward through what seems like a maze, restating directions from a different perspective, and analyzing facts by working backward from a probable conclusion lead to learning activities that engage students in a myriad of thinking skills:

Opening and blending rather than categorizing
Expanding exploration
Changing roles and perspectives
Advancing considerations
Accepting mistakes as positive proof of having tried
Understanding motivations
Cooperation
Moving toward goals
Uncovering previously unknown or unacknowledged facts
Saving time
Looking in the same direction but with varied perspectives
Removing confrontational atmospheres
Refusing to take adversarial actions
Sorting through feelings
Focusing on options
Finding benefits
Layers and shades of meaning
Establishing optimal learning environments, actions, patterns, and choices

The thinking skills connected to de Bono's (1985) Six Hats Method consistently produce new approaches, constructive actions, and faster applications. Each hat color represents a different perspective. Students learn to change perspectives regularly and easily just by exchanging hats, thus enriching higher-level thinking skills, creativity, and empathy. Students from children to adults see the challenges in switching perspectives, but they also enjoy the fun in this thinking activity.

SHOW students models.

Students develop through exposure to concepts, ideals, role models, and experiences; sometimes a combination of activities, people, and events causes the formation of extraordinary individuals. In teaching English, one can explore any area of life. Language, according to de Bono, (1994) builds bridges in thought and helps to identify, set, analyze, and connect priorities.

de Bono (1994) also revealed how language helps people to explain and share codes whether symbols or thought patterns. Young people have intelligence and abilities but it takes time and effort to grow positive habits, insight, and outlooks. One could start stimulating thinking and English language skills by developing lessons on the topic of time.

Time

Organize an ideal day.
Plan an activity for yourself, another individual, or a group.
Walk through a regular school day to see where the most work is required, and where there is time to relax.
Have a sign-in and sign-out procedure such as a time clock for the class.
Decide when is a good time to talk to a friend in a different time zone.
Imagine traveling across many time zones; compare life in a distant time zone with the local time zone.
Determine how much practice is needed for an event or to reach a high level of competence with a skill or to reach another goal.
Plan and create a meal for a regular day, for a special day, or for a big event.
Examine different careers to see how much time is needed to start that career.
Create a chart to show how much time people spend at their workplaces or how much time people spend on hobbies.
Look at time historically. How did people measure time, mark time, record time, value time, use day time, use dawn and twilight time?
Consider time in dimensions. For instance, in the USA, Eastern Standard Time(EST) is 12 hours behind China from spring through autumn. That means when someone in the USA has a phone call with a friend in China, the person in the United States is talking to someone who is living in the future! How does this connect to possibilities for time travel? For understanding time’s fluidity? For changing a perspective?
Compare the use of time in different environments, such as the city and country, and in different cultures, such as the local one to a city in another part of the world.
Review use of time by gender in the local environment and in other environments and cultures.
Reflect on how manners connect to time.
Collect sayings, idioms, book titles, movies, poems, songs, and expressions that have to do with time.
Examine traditions that are based on special times such as the arrival of a new year
Read a story, discuss, and analyze a story, poem, or song that has a focus on time.
See how people waste time, lose time and choose to ignore time to help students make better choices for their own use of time.

Develop Perspectives.

Relationships require understanding and hard work. Flaxington (2009) described personal perspectives as unique elements of every individual. That differing perspectives exist must be taught to young people as a consideration for any relationship with another person. People need to learn that even when empathizing, by making a statement such as, “I know what you mean,” they reveal a me-centered attitude. They understand the other or think they understand the other based on their own perspective.

Flaxington (2009) advocated changing the me-centered perspective to build possibilities of more and healthier relationships with others. To see with another person’s perspective requires a filtering of ideas, reflection with more communication, and a stepping outside of oneself. Teachers can practice skills connected to this theory with the following activities, but these are just a fragment of possibilities. Be creative!

Students can practice taking different vantage points to gain insight, sympathy,and empathy.
By choosing an event, action, or scenario, teachers can help students imagine the chosen event, action, or scenario from different perspectives.
Practice recognizing actions and words of sympathy and actions and empathy.
Choose people very unlike people in the class, school, and town and have the students find similarities between their lives and the lives of the people chosen due to apparent differences.
List and describe solutions that could occur to solve local, community, province, national, and international problems if more people cooperated toward the same goals.
Choose items that students take for granted and imagine life without those items; then identify places where these items are rarely available.
Consider simplifying life by doing without some items.
Ask for ideas for meeting the needs of impoverished people.
Role-play situations where a person assumes he or she knows the reason why a person does something. Then ask the class to come up with a wide variety of reasons why a person has done a certain action.
Be open to sharing information about daily challenges, thoughts, and feelings so that others can learn enough to understand your perspective.
Practice sharing different levels of questions on the same theme. For example: How do you heat your home? What is a hot food you enjoy? Who is the human center of warmth in your life? By starting with a simple question, then taking a step into a person’s preferences, and finally asking for more personal information, individuals can learn to share their perspectives with others.

Roles

Understanding the relativity of time as it connects to varied perspectives can lead students to see a broader scope of life and to understand how people come to have roles in life. Students can develop a respect for others, roles chosen and roles foisted upon a person, then accepted, changed, or rejected. Roles connect to values such as responsibility, duty, service, and love in action. Hughes (2009) determined roles for humanity are changing as ecology, catastrophes, environments, and patterns for social change, and disappear. Ashforth’s (2001) views on role transitions connect to individual perspectives and organizational changes. Students can begin to recognize roles when they are in elementary grades and to analyze and evaluate motivations, connections, choices, and outcomes based on roles one accepts or chooses in life.

Students consider roles they might choose, and possibilities appear for the use and development of language:

Vocabulary, discussion, reading, writing, and projects can include motivations, goals, options, and role models both positive and negative.
Students can assess the reliability of facts, opinions, common ideas, and overlooked
The self-efficacy of informed and careful choices can appear to students

through guest speakers, readings, television, and other media presentations.

Students can imagine, role-play, act, mimic, intern, research, compare, and design roles.
Students can also analyze roles portrayed on television, in plays, and in movies. Analyzing presentations helps students to understand the similarities and differences between an arranged presentation of a role and the realism of life roles.
Educators can encourage and help students to see where choices led to positive

life experiences or negative life experiences, preparing students for the choices

they will face.

de Bono's Six Thinking Hats, (1985) presents attitudes, interests, preferences, skills, and emotions that affect understanding, perspectives, learning, and life choices. Teachers of middle and high school students have opportunities to aid students in developing essential skills for making wise life choices. Lateral Thinking, by de Bono,(1973) reveals a method to complement vertical thinking approaches; lateral thinking generates many ideas and vertical thinking looks for ways to use those ideas., I Am Right, You are Wrong, ( de Bono (1991) demonstrates the importance of helping students to see they are not limited by perceived and usual choices. Teachers can use language to stretch students’ thinking, comprehension, conversational, creativity, cooperation, and communication abilities.

TEACH students to understand how they learn.

Ashforth (2001) described the importance of understanding social identities because they affect thinking, values, competencies, communication, and actions. de Bono goes far beyond Ashforth and others in recommending that people teach children how to think. Teaching young people to understand how they think will lead them to discover how they have learned something, how they can unlearn some negative thinking patterns, and how they can learn in the future. In Teach Your Child How to Think, (1994) de Bono cautioned avoidance of questions such as, what is good or bad about this idea or action. This separation into good and bad immediately limits thinking. Instead, ask young people: What is being communicated? What did this person mean? Is any of this useful? In which different ways will people perceive this idea and action?

Young people learn by mimicking at their earliest ages and by questioning. Educators can help students prepare for the time when they will have questions and need to make choices in thinking, communicating, and acting. Teaching children to understand their system of organizing, their patterns, habits, approaches, and behavior will help them see what they can develop more to their benefit and to the benefit of others, and what should change.

In Teach Your Child How to Think, (1994) de Bono provided exercises to move students through levels of thinking, approaches to thinking, and generating new ideas that can better their lives, their communities, their countries, and their world. Students are the children not just of one family, but of a community and a society. Everyone from their parents to their teachers to their neighbors should feel a responsibility to help students learn to think and problem solve. Students look for role models who overcome adversity with successful problem-solving. Most teachers have had to overcome a variety of challenges. If a teacher can share realistic problem solving from personal experience or the life experience of others, students will gain knowledge, abilities, and hope.

Teaching Lateral Thinking and Creative Action

Hernando knows the neighborhoods of his students. He follows what happens in their environments by paying close attention to local news and by making some home visits to tell parents or guardians something positive about their teenagers. As part of Hernando’s goal of helping students to learn how to think from different perspectives and find creative solutions, Hernando has collected true stories of individuals from simple and impoverished backgrounds who have gone on to make important inventions or live as respected leaders in some fields.

After students read or view information about the individual Hernando selected, the students look at crucial turning points in the person’s life story. They learn to see patterns in the way the person made choices. Sometimes Hernando assigns more research about an individual so that students will engage in finding and checking facts.

Hernando also has his students spend some time imagining what could have happened if the individual had made a different choice. Students also consider the different views people held of the individual they have studied. Finally, Hernando has students imagine they lived as a childhood friend of the individual under consideration, and Hernando asks them how a good friend might have seen and encouraged this person to overcome adversity and reach to make dreams a reality. These practices have students consider de Bono's prime categories of time, choices, problem-solving, creativity, diversity, roles, perspectives, cooperation, refusing to take adversarial action, finding benefits, sorting through feelings, examining shades of meaning, choosing to look beneath the surface, and considering ways to make life better for people

Harry continually looks for ways to reinforce the idea of serving others and making the world a better place. With de Bono's emphasis on roles, perspectives, motivations, cooperation, and looking for ways to benefit others, Harry has his students do a project once a year that traces the origin and development of a humanitarian organization. Students work collaboratively to create a long list of humanitarian organizations and then work with a partner or a small group in researching one of the humanitarian groups. They research the founder and steps to launching the organization. They make a timeline or chart showing how the organization has expanded and if any other groups have come into existence out of the original group. After writing a summary of the group leaders and efforts, students work on creating a presentation about the value of the organization to the world. Students not only give their presentations in the classroom but also at the senior center they visit. A few times the class presentations have been observed by a reporter who visited the senior center or in the senior center’s publication of events. Students feel affirmed and encouraged to work on even more projects through this recognition.

In Hua Xin’s plans, the school measures of skills and the end of the year test play an important part in her choice of projects. Hua Xin values de Bono's many suggestions for having students consider time, choices, organization, and possibilities for problem-solving. Hua Xin works throughout the school year to teach organization skills, including varied methods for studying and reaching goals or at least making a clear advance toward a goal. In the first week of classes, Hua Xin has students list 5 goals for their school year, 2 academic, 2 social, and one related to a favorite activity or hobby. Students spend time decoding elements for success in reaching goals. By engaging in this practice in discussions and writing, Hua Xin has students work on transferring ideas and provoking new thoughts. She challenges them to come up with sayings or songs that can add encouragement to a person’s pursuit of a goal. Some activities Hua Xin has used include having students write about an ideal school day, planning study activities, determining how much practice is needed to reach a higher level of skill, and collecting sayings, idioms, songs, and poems that focus on time.

Heather wants to develop higher-order thinking skills and empathy in her students. Thinking about systems, how something is organized, and how it changes over time has Heather challenging her students to examine a system in their town, region, or nation. As they look into the system she asks them to look at the system as a person who leads the system, as a person who has a lowly job in the system, as a person in a competitor system, and as a person outside the system. de Bono emphasizes a change in perspective as a way to build new ideas, creative ideas, different patterns, and revitalized approaches. Heather expects students to work with a partner or group to write a five-part paper about the system, one part from each of the perspectives she requires, and the fifth part describing how this system might evolve in the future. Students are to use as many vocabulary words specific to the system as possible and they create a glossary of terms. Students also must find quotes from famous individuals about the system they chose for their project. The quotes can be positive or negative and students list them from most positive to most negative. This part of the project aims to show students even more perspectives on the system that is their topic.

References

Ashforth, B.E. (2001). Role transitions in organizational life: An identity based

perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum.

de Bono, E. (1973). Lateral thinking: Creativity step by step. Harper Colophon.

de Bono, E. (1991). I am right, you are wrong. Penguin Books.

de Bono, E. (1994). Teach your child how to think. Penguin Books.

de Bono, E. (1985). Six thinking hats. Little Brown.

Esquith, R. (2009). Lighting their fires: Raising extraordinary children in a

mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world. Viking.

Flaxington, B. (2009). Understanding other people: The five secrets to human

behavior. Motivational Press.

Francois,C.,& Zonana, E. (2009). Catching up on conventions: Grammar

lessons for middle school writers. Heinemann.

Hjortshoj, K. (2009). The transition to college writing. (2nd ed.).

Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Hughes, J.D. (2009). An environmental history of the world: Humankind’s

changing role in the community of life (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Martin, R.L. (2009). The design of business: Why design thinking is the next

competitive advantage. Harvard Business School Publishing.

Pederson, L. ( 2002). Creating transformations. School Arts, 101(8),56.

Sloane, P. (2006). The leader’s guide to lateral thinking skills: Unlocking the creativity and innovation in you and your team. Kogan Page.

Willax, P. ( 2006). Don’t let your brain get in the way of your creativity. New

Hampshire Business Review. p. 26.