Assistant Principal - Pastoral Care
Thinking Deeply
In an email that I wrote to the Year 12 students recently, I offered them some reflections that I had had while doing a walk:
“I was thinking about a sight last term where I saw students walking to school, heads down and focused on scrolling through the phone - not an uncommon sight, actually more the norm than the exception in today's society. On my walk I was wondering about how this is what people do to fill in the 'blanks', the empty spaces, by looking at the phone. It seems we crave stimulus constantly but is there a cost to that in terms of how deeply we are able to think?
To achieve at the highest levels in the HSC (and beyond) requires a good deal more than surface knowledge. As a student you learn in class but this is just the beginning of learning. More often than not, in class you are introduced to the ideas/concepts and learning activities are designed to help you grasp these concepts. Homework and assessments are to help you develop your understanding. But how do you get to a deep understanding? How do you get deeper thinking in your work which is so highly prized? How do you personalise your understanding beyond the basics of what is in a textbook or powerpoint slides and show that you really understand rather than can recall facts and information?
I think to do this you need time to reflect and wonder and question; time to make connections and see patterns, to 'construct your knowledge' which is vastly different from 'consuming knowledge'. Construction is active, while consuming is passive. Construction is deliberate and challenging and difficult while consuming tends to be easy.
Our brains are incredibly complex, powerful machines that when given the opportunity can achieve profound thought. Everyone's is.
Some people will respond and argue that 'yes this is what smart or intelligent people do, but I'm not like that'. Most contemporary research is showing that this is not the case - that intelligence is not fixed, intelligence is based on the habits of our mind. The thinking is that the more we train our brain to do certain things than the more likely it is to do them. That habits which can be developed or learned determine intelligence more than some genetic predisposition.
Which is my quandary, are we training our brains not to think deeply by using every spare moment to scroll through our notifications? Have we been conditioned to think that without stimulus it is boring or frightening to be left with our thoughts? Are we doomed to shallow, superficial thinking because we don't give our brain the opportunity, time, space to cogitate, to work its way through and make complex knowledge?
And I am not saying that everything that comes up is mindless drivel, of course you may be looking at important social issues and different commentators with divergent opinions that requires you to think and consider what you believe. Only you will know how much of this you are doing.
Perhaps if you experiment by not having the phone beside you while you work it will promote good brain activity.
Perhaps if you designate time to think (with the phone nowhere in sight) ... just think about what you are learning, what you are finding interesting or struggling with or need to figure out.
Perhaps if you do this you may plumb the depths which is so highly prized in our society and increasingly necessary for surviving in a complex world ... just some thoughts from my walk.”
Mr Mick Larkin - Assistant Principal - Pastoral