THINKING LIKE A TEACHER

In 2019, Scott Adams published a book called Loserthink. 

On page 1, he defines "loserthink" as "absurd and unproductive reasoning" that you hear "if you use social media, or you make the mistake of paying attention to other people's opinions in any form". 

He laments the fact that "we don't teach thinking in schools" and so people aren't very good at it.

All spot on, but what is interesting about his book is the solution he proposes: getting broadly familiar with the types of thinking that are encouraged and developed in various professions. 

Each chapter explores what the average person can learn from particular professional domains:

• "Thinking like a Psychologist"
• "Thinking like an Engineer"
• "Thinking like a Scientist" 
• "Thinking like an Entrepreneur"
• Et cetera

So, for example, in "Thinking like an Artist", Adams point out that "a defining characteristic of artists is that they tend to have strong powers of imagination". (53) Greater skills in imagination would help non-artists think more productively in daily life by helping them see that "the most likely explanation for many - if not most - situations in life is something you didn't imagine". 

In other words, we jump to conclusions too quickly. And that can be extremely unproductive. With a little more imagination, we'd see more options for why someone did what they did or said what they said. Having a more active imagination could produce a bit more humility in our opinions and conclusions. (And likely disarm a whole lot of drama in the process.)

Anyway, I bring all this up to point out that as useful as I find Adams' book, there is a glaring oversight on his part: There's no chapter entitled "Thinking like a Teacher". 

If I could bring this back to my overall discussion of pastors needing to be teachers just as much (if not more) as they are preachers, I think what is missing in seminary education is exactly training on "Thinking like a Teacher". 

And it leads to a lot of unproductive lecturing.