Is thinking over-rated?

Thinking is over-rated! Well, that’s what I tell many of my English Language and English Literature students.

It’s not as bad as it sounds though, as the otherwise blasé statement has a caveat. It is always as a consequence of seeing a student, having been given an assignment to write, even with extensive guidance and support... yet will still be found sitting at their desk, a blank page in front of them, fiddling with their pen or sucking on the end of it, staring into the distance, doodling, or just immobile, immovable.

I so frequently offer, “How can I help?” This in preference to a command to “Get writing,” or to question their lack of progress. I do want to know and understand why they are not progressing, but I feel the oblique approach, rather than a direct approach, is much less confrontational in that first instance, and therefore will be seen in a much more positive vein.

In any event, the response is almost always identical... “I’m just thinking!” And my rejoinder almost always the aforesaid, “Thinking is over-rated... what you need to be doing is writing.” I will go on to explain how doing, writing, activates the genuine writing process. I like to require the students to first write down the task, or the question they are responding to, and then to paraphrase the task as their introduction to their assignment... and they will be, to use a time-worn phrase... off and laughing.

There is a bit of an analogy in rolling a hula-hoop, or getting a cart, or bike going, in that those first couple of turns, or meters, are the hardest, and once it gets rolling, there’s no stopping it. It’s exactly the same with your imagination, and in fact, students who have embraced the method tell me the hardest part is their writing keeping pace with their imagination, which is a great ‘problem’ to have.

The old way of thinking was to have a basic five-steps to quality writing, consisting of brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and submission, but today, that process has more failings than an ashtray on a Vespa, and is counter-intuitive to contemporary understanding of youth and student societies, motivations, and needs. So, let’s look at why the traditional writing may not be effective in meeting classroom assignments and exam question answering requirements.

For a start, the process is too unwieldy and time consuming. Test and examination constraints don’t genuinely allow sufficient time to effectively implement a five-step process for effective answers. Most test papers don’t, physically, offer sufficient space. But most telling is the student and learner feedback that they can’t, and probably won’t, write or produce, four versions of the same thing. They don’t see the point, and having to do something pointless is just another frustration.

Andrew Fowler wrote last year of 600,000 UK students every year being forced into a cognitive pressure-cooker, and questioned the demands and difficulty of exam questions themselves drawn up by examiners making inferences about what is being learned prior to the exams, rather than checking the students’ learning. Student feedback to Fowler’s study revealed issues with recall, reasoning, and the application of knowledge, and found “compelling reasons, in terms of teaching and learning, improving question design, validity, and public confidence in the examination system, to listen to students’ views.”

We would be better, as a profession, to develop their imaginations, to stretch the way they see questions, and to have faith in their ability to respond to the question from their own perspectives, and write what they think... not what they think a marker wants to see. Writing from that distanced position will only confuse them, in every sense, from spelling and punctuation, to grammar, to tense, to vocabulary, when what is important is how they see the answer in their own words and way.

Thinking is not over-rated, but thinking for effect is rarely taught, and even less rarely trusted... and we do need to empower our kids to trust themselves and their abilities, and then we must trust them, that what they think, they will write. We don’t need sycophancy, but we do need vision, enthusiasm, and diversity of thought.