One day in primary school, there was a test—something they did back in the 60s. I was about ten, and the teacher posed the question, “What is the third request in the Lord’s Prayer?” Perhaps you know the answer, but that’s not really the point—test yourself if you like.
I was stumped. I felt insulted. I was angry at the teacher. Why? Because we hadn’t been asked to memorise the answer to this question. I felt like the teacher was cheating, breaking the unwritten learner-teacher contract. Their job was to tell me what to memorise, and my job was to memorise it.
After the test, but before the results were in, I stewed over this unfair, below-the-belt, unconstitutional conduct. It really got under my skin. Then the moment of reckoning came. The answer was, “Thy will be done.”
I mentally rehashed all the instruction we’d had on the Lord’s Prayer. We’d been forced to memorise it, recite it privately and as a class, write it down, and see it up on the blackboard. My word, had we memorised that material! I was practically an expert on the Lord’s Prayer at ten years old.
What amazed me was that if I’d just paused, re-ran the prayer in my mind, and counted on my fingers, the answer was right there in front of me. And that’s when it hit me—this was what thinking actually was. It was more than memorisation. It was what happens when you engage your mind and explore the uncertain mystery of whatever you are doing. And letting go of right answers.
I had met thought in school. Real thought. The kind that goes beyond the safe borders of what you’ve been taught and ventures into the unknown. And it was exciting. It was fun. It was totally personal and, dare I say, selfish? I was inside my own head. It was me. It was self-discovery in its rawest, most naive form.
That fascination with pondering stayed with me from the age of about ten, what a blessing. I became a thinking addict. Soon, I was perused the entire World Book encyclopaedia (a pre-Google, ancient summary of everything known to humankind at the time—about 20 volumes or roughly two metres of pages). I learned to channel my curiosity into something constructive, awesome and wonderful.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Epilogue: Sadly, sixty years later, and having been involved in university-level instruction for about forty years, I’ve seen that, unfortunately, a sizable minority of my learners have not had their “Eureka” moment—the realisation that they need to independently learn, ponder, engage and think. And with AI making thoughtfulness less necessary and easily outsourced, it feels like we are entering some very scary times.