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I first heard this line in 2002 from my high school Statistics teacher and have never forgotten it since then.
In a wonderful presentation by our school's founder, this line again rushed into me. The magic word trigger: divergent thinking.
She had made an amazing and thought-provoking point:
The children we are presently teaching in our schools will be facing challenges which we might have never thought about until now. They will come out of school, face the real world in 20, 30 years or so; and, with the fast-changing pace of technology and societal demands, we cannot totally see as of this moment what needs they would have when they start living their lives on their
own.
The question therefore that came about is this: Are we preparing our children for these yet-unseen challenges? Same question was left for all of us to reflect about.
In my case, however, another question popped out. What does it take for a child of today to survive the yet-unseen challenges of tomorrow? What areas should the present educational system focus on? My suggestion: divergent thinking.
If we all agree that tomorrow is a blind curve, where we can't see exactly what awaits us, then the best way to prepare children is to allow them adapt to whatever may come. Since we don't know exactly what's going to come, we have to prepare them to overcome this blindness by equipping them with the skills required to adjust in new and strange situations. This won't be possible through convergent thinking.
In convergent thinking, we know that there is one correct answer and it's a universally accepted answer. In divergent thinking, we open up ourselves to the possibility that a question may have different acceptable answers...that a problem may have diverse solutions...that a problem may be solve in myriad of ways.
This is notwithstanding the fact, of course, that man has already gone a long way of establishing methodologies, facts and realities that are universally acceptable. We have already done so much in the past that we are privileged to have single, correct answers to many of the problems of today. We know that 1 + 1 is 2. We know that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Hence, convergent thinking is an educational reality that is essential in formal education.
But then again, we have to realize that there are also a lot of things which man has not been able to find a single, correct answer so far. And as we continuously face new horizons, we expect more strange problems requiring newer solutions. In this aspect, divergent thinking would be our saving grace.
