Letter to the Editor: Think about it

When I think about thinking and why people do or don’t do what they really ought to be doing, I realize that one can survive in this modern world without having a thought. It simply isn’t necessary. Now I can visualize a Cheyenne or a Blackfoot or even a white settler on the plains of middle America, and it seems to me that without the ability and actual practice of thinking, one wouldn’t last very long. It would be a short life.

The same would seem to be applicable to our ancestors as they were becoming “civilized” enough to form communities and allow the productive work to be done by those who were best able to do it. I can’t imagine every person in the village able to first, find the right material, and second, to fashion an arrowhead; or for that matter, to make a bow and arrow that would actually kill something — hence the beginning of not needing to know.

Where this is going, is here and now, at least in the world I live in, thought is not necessary. Deciding on what to eat at the next meal, how to get to work, what to do at work when one gets there, when to get back home, and then what to do at home before going to bed, requires no thought. Absolutely unnecessary. And since thought is unnecessary, most of us don’t do it. Why bother? It takes effort. A primary problem with thinking is that it takes a certain amount of knowledge. One can’t think in a vacuum. Consequently, there is a precedent to thinking which is learning. One needs to learn before one can think.

And since learning is necessary before one can think, learning must have occurred which may or may not be the case and most usually not.

A conundrum exits. The purported purpose of the years of K-12 is for the education of our children, with the express purpose of giving them the ability to function in the modern world. I will have to say, it succeeds. It does give our children the ability to function in our modern world — a world in which thinking is not necessary and in fact, discouraged. One is not equipped to think at graduation from high school; that is not the purpose of a K-12 education. And these parents who are vociferously objecting to certain presentations by the schools are correct, whether they recognize it or not, that schools are not for the purpose of adding thinking adults to the general population, schools function to give a person the ability to survive, and even flourish, without thinking. Simply not necessary.

Now there are a few teachers and administrators who have a different view and actually express the opinion that maybe an education should be more. These teachers and administrators are quickly silenced and made to understand that this is not to be. Sometimes you have to ask yourself if the parents objecting aren’t unconsciously the wisest — in order to flourish in modern America, one does not need to think and is better off not doing it.

Richard E. H. Phelps II

Mingo