Last week, as I was walking around or association pool, I saw a small child looking intently at a pile of something. It looked like he might have been trying to figure out how to pile some leaves or twigs just so, trying and trying until it worked to his satisfaction. Young children are good at thinking, trying to figure things out and, of course, incessantly asking the one word question WHY?

It seems that too much of the education we give them as they grow is what and not why. It does not spend a lot of time on the whys. When we focus on the whys it is "This is why, remember it", rather than why do YOU think it was so? What was going on in the world at that time that might have caused them to - - ? Writing out math equations, figuring out how to multiply and divide rather than how to use a calculator and all of the formulas available to us in Excel.

I have been teaching business courses as an adjunct professor for over 10 years and continue to see this problem with students at the college level. We promote something called "critical thinking" which encourages and rewards students, not so much for a correct answer as the understanding of the issue, and their use of logic and reasoning in coming to the conclusion they reached.

Believe it or not, everything we are told is not true. Only by thinking, reasoning, evaluating and drawing our own conclusions, can we come to the appropriate conclusion, for sure the correct one for us. That only comes if we are taught how to think and not what to think.

Enjoy the week ahead.

Jim