Thinking and Education

In the field of education thinking is of extreme importance. It is the important mental activity of a person. Education has the highest post in mental development. It is important to improve thinking-power for the smooth functioning of education. Teacher should take following steps to develop the thinking power of the students:

1. Emphasis on the Development of Concept and Experience: Concept knowledge and experience of bulky objects are of much importance in thinking-process. Therefore teachers should create this kind of situations in front of student and give opportunity of inspection so that student can make concept by personal experience. 
2. Help in Concept-Formation: Teacher should help in concept formation by scientific way. Concepts are based on personal experiences. Therefore they should provide various facilities to get experience. Teacher should clearly teach about each and every subject. Thinking power develops with the help of concept-knowledge.
3. Emphasis on Language-Development: Language is called the foundation of thinking. Thinking can be only expressed with the help of language. Language and thinking have deep relationship. A proper dictionary is required to the memory of past experience. Therefore a good, interesting and proper teaching technique should be adopted to increase the dictionary of students. 
4. Remove the Habit of Cramming: It is responsibility of the teacher to look after the habit of cramming within the students; they should be motivated to learn by understanding. Often, students cram the definition in subjects like science; grammar etc. and the teacher also make them to cram the definition without any related experience. This kind of knowledge is not clear, student use this kind of knowledge without any thinking as it is. Various examples should be explained to the students to attract them towards the general law, so that they themselves can create definition. This process is helpful in thinking development. 
5. Create the Curiosity: Teacher should create such kind of situations in front of the student so that, it can create curiosity within the student towards subject and he can make thinking to understand the subject.
6. Development of Concentration and Interest: It is very important to have concentration and interest for thinking. If we don’t have interest in a subject then we cannot concentrate on it. Therefore teacher required to create concentration and interest for usual thinking, through proper teaching-method. 
7. Inspiration: Thinking needs inspiration. We think on the solution of a problem by an inspiration. Therefore child should be motivated for acquiring knowledge and problem solution. 
8. Provide Opportunities for Argument and Debate: Teachers should provide opportunities for debate in education, subjects related to syllabus. Such as, by organizing group discussion, debate competition etc. in this way students get the opportunities for thinking and discussion related to syllabus and other general knowledge. 
9. Handing over the Responsibility: Those activities where responsibility is involved should be handed over to the students. This will motivate the healthy thinking. 
10. Provide Opportunities for Thought-Expression: students should be provided with the opportunities to express their view freely. There should be no unreasonable disturbance in their freedom. Nobel and Mauntesri supported the principle of self-working and freedom for the self-expression of children in education.
11. Concentrate on teaching technique/process: Teacher should take help of proper teaching-processes by psychological method for the development of thinking-power. Thoughtful questions should be asked to the students and questions should be asked differently in exams. Thinking ability can be developed by proper teaching-method.

Reasoning and Problem-Solving

Reasoning is the best form of thinking. Reasoning is a process of thinking, the concepts earned in it are used to define a situation and for solution. When concepts are organized in a proper manner within the mind then a new problem is solved with the help of these. A person has to solve many problems in his daily life. Various problems are to be faced, so that adjustment can be made with situations. Problem is that situation for which a person does not have a predefined solution. 

When a problem arises then a person needs to consider about it. In this situation of reasoning-thinking arises. For example, “my pen which was on the study table lost somewhere. Pen is valuable therefore I have a problem to find the pen and I make search for it and I think who have taken my pen? May be the mate, who entered the room for dusting, or my sister, who have exam today, then I reached to the conclusion that, I am getting late for school, I will definitely get the pen from the younger sister. 

Thus, the current problem will be solved. It is an reasoning. Woodworth called reasoning as ‘mental exploration’. In simple words an attempt to made conclusion by examining the current situations on the basis of past experience or memory subject, with the help of reasoning. Getting a conclusion is the major element of reasoning. To reach on a conclusion it is important to have a well organized mental activity and managed reasonable thinking process. Various philosophers have given various definitions of reasoning to understand reasoning:

1. N.L. Munn: “Reasoning is combining past experiences in order to solve a problem which can-not be solved by mere reproduction of earlier solutions.”
2. Bernard: “Reasoning is a process of delaying response until data are arranged into a new combination so that a clearly perceived goal can be reached.”
3. Gates and Others: “Reasoning is productive thinking in which previous experiences are organized or combined in new ways, to solve a problem.”

Types of Reasoning

1. Inductive Reasoning—In this kind of reasoning a person finds a principle or general rule/law, on the basis of the elements or examples, which he had find with his personal experience. It is believed that there is no pre-defined principle in this kind of reasoning. Coming of reasoning have three levels: (1). Inspection, (2).experiment, (3). Generalization. In this first of all elements are inspected. A principle is imagined after inspection and its reality is tested after experimenting/using it. A general principle is defined as a result of experiment/use. Example of inductive reasoning can be seen in the education of language, such as teacher has to define noun in grammar. Teacher does not tell the definition of noun in beginning. Students are firstly introduced with the name of thing, place and persons, then students are helped to reach the conclusion with the help of question, that the name of a thing, person or place is called noun.
2. Deductive Reasoning—Pre-defined thinking or principles are accepted in this kind of reasoning and the reality of an object or situation is proved on the basis of it. For example, every person is mortal. Ram is a person, means he is mortal. 

On the above bases of reasoning, in the words of Bhatia we can say that “Inductive process is the process of discovery/research and ‘Deductive process’ is the process of experiment and evidence”.