Why ThinkPlus?
In the 21st Century, we need people who are literate and numerate and have information technology skills. We also need people who can build and maintain relationships, work productively in teams, and communicate effectively. Problem-solvers, people who are resilient, take responsibility for decisions, and are enquiring, flexible, intuitive, adaptable and willing to learn new skills when the job demands it. Accordingly, thinking for understanding and doing needs to be our education focus, rather than simply acquiring a body of knowledge.
It’s this simple. Our capacity for amassing information has grown exponentially. But if schools and colleges continue to see their role as simply installing that knowledge — hard-wiring it in a traditional way into student’s brains — then we will fail them. Because increasingly, our world is going to be about not what you know, but what you know about how to do something useful with what you know.
The regular curriculum consists of subject matters of mathematics, science, languages, history and so on, that each child navigates according to ability and interest.
The metacurriculum proposes quite another kind of content. It is good to have a clear picture of what we want youngsters to learn. This is what a curriculum is for.
A metacurriculum is about youngsters learning their way around good thinking. It is made up of key terms and concepts about thinking, beliefs about and attitudes towards thinking and good thinking practices.
~Dr David Perkins, Senior Research Associate, Harvard Graduate School
of Education