I love this. As adults we take time thinking about, for example, an algebraic formula for : 16, 06, 68, 88, …, and 98.

Yet the answer is so simple. I wonder how many times we jump to conclusions and make a situation more complicated than it needs to be.

The fact that most 6 year olds can answer this question brings me hope… we have not yet taken away their ability to think laterally. (Or is it that children at the age of six do not yet have a secure number sense?) Ken Robinson talks about the affect that school has on children’s ability  to  think laterally and creatively:

The research found…

Of 1,600 children aged three to five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent ways. By the time they were aged eight to 10, 32% could think divergently. When the same test was applied to 13 to 15-year-olds, only 10% could think in this way. And when the test was used with 200,000 25-year-olds, only 2% could think divergently. . . . …Education is driven by the idea of one answer and this idea of divergent thinking becomes stifled.

Do we want our children and students to think in this way? 

How might we be stumping our student’s thinking?

What can we do as educators to nurture this divergent thinking? 

Further reading: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11467301