Edward De Bono Interview - Thinking Clubs

Edward De Bono: The answer lies with the question. There is no shelf in the bookstore for Thinking. Universities have no faculty of Thinking; schools have no subject “Thinking”. The most fundamental aspect of life is totally neglected.

Our Manly: You write that intellectual thinking is the enemy of lateral thinking.

Edward De Bono: The problem is what I call the intelligence trap. You take a view and then use your intelligence to defend that point of view, instead of exploring the subject. I’ll give you a bit of a paradox. If you’ve had an argument, you benefit far more from losing the argument than from winning it. Because if you lose an argument, you gain another point of view. If you win the argument you get a bit of an ego boost.

Our Manly: Why did Australian schools and business adopt your techniques earlier on?

Edward De Bono: In general, our books sell better in Australia than anyplace in the world. Education is patchy, certain schools do it, and others don’t. However, it’s not like it is in Venezuela where by law every school has to do it. That happened because there was a professor of philosophy that was interested in my work who joined the ruling party and became the Minister for the Development of Intelligence. He invited me to Venezuela and I taught 250 teachers, they trained 107,000 teachers and by law it’s in every school.

Our Manly: Do you believe exercising the thinking mind will ever become an every day task in schools?

Edward De Bono: There is research in England suggesting teaching my thinking as a separate subject increases performance in every subject by 30-100%. That’s powerful stuff!

Our Manly: There’s a great debate currently in Australia. Our Prime Minister is trying to make it possible for any Australian to be seen by a doctor within 4 hours in an emergency clinic or hospital. We have a terribly long waiting cue at the moment.

Edward De Bono: Thinking about that revolves around funding. I would structure the argument a little differently. I think we need a new level of doctor, call them a paramedic if you like, who is really trained to deal with 80% of emergencies, and if you fall into the 20% that needs admission, that’s fine, but the doctors are therefore not burned by the other 80%. Something structural like that would be more long term effective than different financing.

It’s a bit like education. Building school halls is a good idea but it’s not a revolution. Schools should be teaching “Now Story”. Schools teach history. Youngsters have no idea how the world works now. What a corner shop does, how business works, how to get a mortgage. Learning about the War of the Roses is of not much practical use. Now Story, Thinking and Operacy, like literacy and numeracy, is a skill of doing. Organising something, making it happen. This should be as fundamental as the others. Essentially, education is just expensive babysitting. You’re keeping kids occupied. The skills kids take from that are minimal. You learn- trigonometry that’s fine if you’re going to be an engineer, otherwise- total waste of time.  You don’t have to teach every kid calculus just in case one who wants to be an engineer.

Our Manly: How do you propose we bring in these sweeping reforms?

Edward De Bono: Very difficult. If individuals who are motivated to enter politics identify very clearly with some of these changes and as a result build up support… if you get a senior person who is a champion, change happens. 

Visit the Edward De Bono Official Site

Visit the De Bono Institute Site in Melbourne, Australia

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