Lateral thinking (迂回思维), first described by Edward de Bono in 1967, is just a
few years older than Edward's son. You might imagine that Casper was raised to
be an adventurous thinker, but de Bono name was so famous, Casper's parents
worried that any time he would say something bright at school, his teachers
might snap, "Where do you get that idea from?" "We had to be
careful and not overdo it," Edward admits. Now Casper is at Oxford—which once
looked unlikely because he is also slightly dyslexic (诵读困难). In fact, when he
was applying to Oxford, none of his school teachers thought he had a chance. "So
then we did several thinking sessions," his father says, "using my techniques
and, when he went up for the exam, he did extremely well." Soon after, Edward de
Bono decided to write his latest book, Teach Your Children How to
Think, in which he transforms the thinking skills he developed for
brain-storming businessmen into informal exercises for parents and children to
share. Thinking is traditionally regarded as something executed
in a logical sequence, and everybody knows that children aren't very logical. So
isn't it an uphill battle, trying to teach them to think? "You know," Edward de
Bono says, "if you examine people's thinking, it is quite unusual to find faults
of logic. But the faults of perception are huge! Often we think ineffectively
because we take too limited a view." Teach Your Child How
to Think offers lessons in perception improvement, of clearly seeing the
implications of something you are saying and of exploring the
alternatives.