I have often told how I once asked a class of 30 twelve-year-olds in a school in Australia to give me their reaction to the suggestion that they should each receive a small amount of money each week for going to school. All thirty thought it was a great idea since they would be able to buy sweets, comics and chewing-gum.
I then briefly explained another simple attention-directing device: the PMI. Here the thinker directs attention to the ‘Plus’ points of an idea first, followed by the ‘Minus’ points and finally the ‘Interesting’ points. At the end of the exercise 29 of the 30 students had totally changed their mind and decided that the suggestion was a bad idea: ‘Where would the money come from?’ etc.
The important point to notice about this story is that I did not stand there asking them questions. I did not say another word after explaining the PMI. The students used this attention-directing device on their own. As a result, they had a broader perceptual picture. As a result of having a broader perceptual picture they changed their mind about the suggestion. The difference from the Socratic method, in which the teacher has to ask a string of questions, is very obvious.
From Edward de Bono’s Parallel Thinking - From Socratic to de Bono Thinking published by Viking.
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