Knowing how to think vs. what to think

I’m not a political writer so please don’t worry, but I watched a video the other day about people’s thought process. It detailed that people should be taught how to figure things out rather than what they should know. If a child is told to spell a word are they wrong because it is misspelled or do we take into account how they go their answer? Example that was given was the word CAT. First child spells it correctly, second child spells it K-A-T and third child spells the word Q-W-X. Obviously the latter two are not the ‘correct’ spellings, but the way we have raised our thinkers is that the second and third children are equally as wrong. When it could be argued that the second child at least spelled it phonetically and is therefore on the right track. I’m not planning on arguing the spelling of students into adults because honestly spell check catches my errors more times than I would like to admit, but I’m going to claim that is because my fingers are faster than my brain.

I’ve been told many times from friends and acquaintances that they would love to write a book, but just don’t know where to start or they would be to much of a perfectionist and it would never be finished. Those people ultimately fear rejection for being wrong. The wrong choice of topic or genre. Wrong because they didn’t use the best or most eloquent words. Are they wrong because they have a story they want to express in their own way? People should feel confident to share what they choose without fear of consequences of any kind.

There was another story recently in book world news, that an author’s book was removed from Amazon’s eBook list because of content. Now I’m not going to get into the entire story or what that content was, but I wanted to share the underlying issue. No, not everyone is going to like everything I like. They aren’t going to want to read every book I love. Does that mean the authors should never have written them? Maybe a disclaimer could have been put on the book vs. forcing the authors voice into silence. If no one downloaded the book after that then it is of no ones concern.

Allowing people to voice their thoughts without telling them this is how you should think is important to me. I came from a family where we talked about what we thought. I try and raise my kids the same way. If they have a belief or a stance on something I ask them why rather than telling them they are wrong. I’m not saying everyone is right or wrong, but I believe people should have a chance to figure out how they arrived at that thought versus me telling them they shouldn’t have gotten there in the first place.

OK I’ll get off my soapbox today, but just remember would you like me to tell you how you should or shouldn’t think just because I believe my way is more correct than yours?[image error]