Schools Of Thought Poem by Richard Theze

“Let’s teach them to think”, the experts said
Those brilliant pioneers and leading figures
Of the modern, critical thinking movement.
“The world is different than before”,
They reason.
“The future unpredictable,
Changing”.
 
Was the fate of ancient Greece easier to foretell?
Socratic wisdom may begin to wonder.
Or change a newfound phenomenon
Since Gautama Siddharta taught
That it is with our thoughts the world is made?
Perhaps he too, knew only
That he knew nothing.
 
What, if not futuristic thinking,
Led to the industrial, technological (or even the French) revolutions?
Were the harnessing of steam, electricity and Greek vocabulary,
Or the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity
All devoid of higher order thinking?
Who was Georges Bernanos,
If not a visionary pioneer of thought?
 
Are Feuerstein, Lipman and de Bono
Any more proponents of the deliberate teaching of thinking
Than those who preceded them?
Does education require any greater re-thinking
Than at any other point in history?
Or for reasons different
From those given now?
 
Was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe perhaps right?
Certainly, thinking is more interesting than knowing.
Have all intelligent thoughts been thought before?
Do ignorant men only raise questions,
That wise men answered a thousand years ago?
Is the pattern thus set? Are we destined to think only in circles?
Or, are we witnessing the dawn of a thinking revolution?
 
I humbly apologise if my thoughts appear at all critical.