Firstly, I must give recognition to Peter Horsfall and Lucy Bennet for their research paper: Thinking Hats in Primary School – From thinking skills to thinking curriculum. Their article featured in the College of Teachers’ Journal Education Today, Vol.55 Number 1, March 2005, PP20-29 who shed more lights on the above topic through the use of De Bono’s technique, to support the development of thinking skills in primary schools across the United Kingdom.
Background information: Edward De Bono was born in Malta, 19th May, 1933. He graduated with a doctorate degree from University of Malta in Clinical Psychology and Physiology. University of Malta is one of the oldest universities in the world, established in 1592. He also obtained other degrees in psychology and physiology from other world- renowned educational institutions, such as, Oxford, London, Cambridge and Harvard.
Napoleon seized control of Malta in 1798, and the British took it in 1800. The country gained independence from Britain in 1964, and became a republic in 1974. Edward De Bono became famous when he developed his Six Colours Thinking Hats methods as a mean of analysing a problem or situation before deciding appropriate courses of action. “In everyday thinking we often try to do too much at once”, said De Bono.
De Bono developed many strategies for lateral and parallel problem-solving techniques used in schools and businesses today. His Six Thinking Hats’ technique to support the development of thinking skills in primary schools gained world-wide recognition in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and up to today. “If you wait opportunity to occur, you will be of the crowd”, said De Bono. In analysing the different colours hats, De Bono said that the White Hat represents “facts”, not facts from opinion, but real facts to be objective and being neutral. The Black Hat represents cautious thinking. For example, safety, care, or phrase such as, “Look before you leap”.
Situation: When teachers asked their colleagues to wear “Black” during an affirmative action, according to De Bono’s Black Hat thinking – something is wrong and needs urgent attention. Our experts in the field of education should be aware that there is a problem to be solved under this colour activity. Now, suppose the teachers were told to wear the “Colour Red” this is another cause of parallel thinking where emotion and intuition provide opportunity to explore feeling about a situation that might not always be considered in a discussion.
The Blue Hat thinking in solving a country’s budget problem: The Blue Hat thinking represents managing and organizing thinking. “What have we done so far?” and “What do we do next?” We could add Yellow Hat thinking with the Blue Hat in making things happen. However, there is nothing difficult about budgets. Under these two colours thinking hats, managers and supervisors should be given flexibility in their department budgets. They must feel that a budget for his or her department is realistic and not because their superiors think it is too high. The majority of countries in the world do not have a balanced budget. Many times a budget cannot balance is because of lack of control and corrupted figures in the budgets.
If we cannot balance our National Budget, take the example from the French. In France, 126,000 young people are unemployed, so the French decided to raise 400 million euros to compensate for the unemployment. The 400 million euros were not on their budget, but it must come from somewhere. The French decided to give each unemployed 650 euros per month to help solve the problem. They have decided to make the big businesses pay more taxes for not hiring permanent workers. Here is where the 400 million euros came from. We must control the inflow of cash – cash flow is the life source of any business. Cutting back too much from the budget has a serious effect on moving the country forward in case of national urgency.
The Green Hat thinking represents moving forward with ideas such as, “What else could we do?” And the Yellow Hat concludes it all: Making things happen. Finally, in schools students are reminded that the colour hat thinking is not for aggression purposes, but rather for creative thinking and problem solving. We could use them to group students, put people in different colour houses is fun in schools, such as belonging to the Blue House, White or Black House. This will help in the development of thinking skills and compete with each other in different houses with their favourite colours. No teachers and classrooms should do without these books from Edward De Bono’s collection.
Joseph Harvey
