To Think

Book excerpt: One of the central questions facing anyone involved in education is can you actually teach anyone to think? To begin to answer this question, it is necessary to know what thinking means. Frank Smith is one of the most influential writers in education today. His work on reading in particular has had a seminal effect on classroom practice throughout the English-speaking world. At the core of all his work has been this issue of the nature of thought. In this book, he analyses the language of thinking and then moves on to look at different aspects of the thinking process: everyday thought, creative and critical thought. Finally he looks critically at the various methods currently advocated for teaching children to think, arguing that learning to think is in the end less a matter of instruction than of experience and opportunity.