The Teacher and the Poet

6. Developing Thinking Strategies

Typical approaches to developing thinking focus on developing thinking strategies. The problem is, learners often find the strategies artificial and unappealing. Helpful as they may be in technical ways, they fail to capture enthusiasm and commitment.

Art on the other hand assists in a natural way. Looking at art invites, rewards, and encourages a thoughtful tendency, enthusiasm, and commitment. This is because works of art connect to the social and personal dimensions of life with strong affective overtones. So, better than most other situations, looking at art can build some very basic thinking dispositions.

• Sensory anchoring. It's helpful to have a physical object to focus on as you think and talk and learn. This comes naturally with art.
• Instant access. The presence of the work of art in the original or in reproduction, permits checking any point of argument or seeking new ideas by looking closer and yet still closer and closer.
• Personal engagement. Works of art are made to draw and hold attention. this helps to sustain prolonged reflection around them.
• Disposition al atmosphere. As emphasized earlier, the aim here is to cultivate thinking dispositions-broad attitudes, tendencies, and habits of thinking.
• Wide-spectrum cognition. Although we tend to think of art as primarily a visual phenomenon, looking at art thoughtfully recruits many kinds and styles of cognition-visual processing, analytical thinking, posing questions, testing hypotheses, verbal reasoning, and more.
• Multconnectedness. Art typically allows and encourages rich connection-making with social themes, features of formal structure, personal anxieties and insights, and historical patterns.

This belief list reveals something of why art is so special and all of these are skills vitally needed in the world today. It is not often the case that we can learn so much in the presence of compelling objects that engage our senses, allow for so many kinds of cognition, connect to so many facets of life, sustain our attention, and so on. Art is an opportunity. Let us not miss it.