How to use “Legit Riddles” as Brain Training Exercises

What make a riddle/puzzle/brain-teaser “legit”?

In order for a riddle to be useful for this exercise it needs to depend on a faulty assumption, unconscious bias or a “Cognitive Blind Spot”.  The answer needs to be both obvious and evident from the information contained in the riddle itself.  It also needs to have only ONE answer that fits the facts or evidence contained in the riddle.

There are “jokes” that masquerade as “riddles” … these are not as helpful in developing or training this skill.

“What has 4-wheels and flies” (A garbage truck)

It’s clever, a bit witty, and pretty funny (if your 10 years old… or a little high) but it’s not a “legit” riddle because FIRST, there are simply too may possible responses that are correct.

Various aircraft, helicopters, X-Game Skaters, landfills, Dead-Baby on a Skateboard… etc…

SECOND, each alternative response has equally sound reasoning from various levels of depth, complexity or perspective. 

While these types of riddles have utility (how many rational responses with sound reasoning can you come up with) they’re not a very good way to practice the type of critical thinking skills that have practical utility.  There are few questions or problems that have multiple answers that are of equal validity, efficacy or utility.

The brain is like any other muscle, you need to use the proper form with the appropriate exercise to reach the desired goal.

How to use riddles to train your brain for better Critical Thinking

1)      Read/Listen to Riddle once

Try to pay close attention, it’s a learned skill, so you may miss some of the details the first time but TRY to complete exercise with only ONE read or listen.  Over time you will get better at picking up on small details quickly, but only if you practice the correct form.

2)      Write down answer to riddle

Write out your response based on your first read/listen.  It’s helpful to try and write your response in a complete sentence.  As we’ve discussed, written communication can improve oral communication.  An idea needs to be fully formed in order to write it out in a complete sentence, the better you get at writing out a complete thought the better you’ll get at FORMING a complete thought.  As you improve your writing, you’ll improve your speaking and you’ll become a better communicator.

3)      Explain WHY your answer makes sense (Explain your reasoning)

At this point you’re likely to identify an error, especially when you start to practice this process, you may have a good “IDEA” but it may not stand up to scrutiny, and that’s the point of this exercise, to develop the ability to assess your own thinking and scrutinize your own reasoning. 

IF (when) you identify an error in reasoning it’s important to NOT destroy your original thought… often, an error will turn out to have a grain of truth to it.  You also don’t want to repeat mistakes.  It’s useful to have access to your earlier attempts to mine useful bits of reasoning or perspectives. 

This is where you might read the riddle for the second time to help explain your reasoning.  In time you will combine your answer and explanation in a single paragraph.

“The reason the man can only ride the elevator to the 10^th floor is because he’s a dwarf and cannot reach the button for the 14^th floor.  If someone is in the elevator with him, he can ask them to hit the button for him, and if it’s raining, he can use his umbrella.”

4)      Discover the “Correct” answer

Don’t check the answer before making 2-3 honest attempts at an answer on your own.  The exercise is what’s important, explaining why a guess doesn’t work is as important as figuring out what DOES work. 

It’s also important to examine your reasoning even if you’ve figured out the correct answer.  It’s possible to have the right answer with the wrong reasoning… and that’s dangerous.  If you get lucky and come to the correct answer with faulty reasoning it will make it more difficult to work through a wrong answer later.  If you think your reasoning is sound, you’re more likely to try and convince yourself that a wrong answer is right… you can create a permeant blind spot in your thinking if you’re not careful.

5)      Reflect on your answer

Assess any errors in reasoning that caused you to reach a faulty conclusion or any aspect of your response that may have missed an element in the question that was important to seeing the solution.  The key to a good riddle is the incorporation of a trigger that will cause an error in reasoning, unconscious bias or cognitive blind spot.  Assessing your reasoning to uncover these common errors is essential to becoming a better critical thinker, asymmetrical problem solver and developing the non-linear thinking skills that are at the heart of innovation and the kind of creative destruction and paradigm shifting that modern life requires.

6)      Write down your error in reasoning and the trigger that caused the “Cognitive Blind Spot”

As previously discussed, having the thought in your head doesn’t mean you’re able to articulate it.  In order to articulate an idea, it must be fully formed and clearly understood.  Writing it out forces you to complete its formation, clarify it and make it more comprehensible.  Also, it gives you a written record to track your growth, see your improvement and provide you with a wealth of information to reflect on and mine as your perceptive abilities improve and perspective shifts over time.

We’ve already explored “Reflection” in “Data Processing” (Unit 3c).  The development of “Meta-Reflection” (reflecting on earlier reflections) will become valuable later.  As previously discussed, the GateWay Method is about building capacity through exercises and activities that stack together to create new skills, strategies and tools.  Each element must be properly constructed in order for the total system to function properly.

As always: Do what I tell you to do, the way I tell you to do it, and give me an honest effort and I guarantee results.  You may not fully understand how all the pieces fit together, but they do, just concentrate on waxing the car, sanding the floor and painting the fence, the rest will take care of itself.

From “What Am I” by Zack Guido (A Collection of Traditional Word Riddles)

Why is “Organization” the FIRST step??

By: TheMister

In TheGateWay Method we start with “Organization” because it serves as the core of life-long learning.  What good is information if you don’t have somewhere to put it??  What good is it to take notes or save an interesting piece of information if you can’t find it when you need it?? 

We live in an information age… but how much of that information can we USE??  How often have you created a pile of papers and wasted hours sifting through it to find the page you needed only to get distracted and forget what you were looking for in the first place or even WHY you needed it??  We have more access to information than at any time in human history and (it seems) less ability to process it into a useful form that can improve our lives.

If you want to add to your existing body of knowledge you can’t just read something one time, or jot down a few notes and expect the information to stay with you.  You need to read a passage multiple time and go back to your notes over and over if you want new knowledge to become deep understanding.  In order to turn information into intelligence you need to WORK with the information… not just memorize it.  There’s a process to working with information that TheGateWay Method teaches.  In order to work that process you need to be able to find the passage of reading, writing or the notes you’re “working” on so you can continue to the next step, and that requires the information be well ORGANIZED and easy to access.

At AtoZ Learning Solutions we believe that building cognitive skills through physicality is a key feature to improving educational outcomes and developing the next generation of learners. 

That’s the “surface” reason that we start with organization skills, but there’s a deeper reason.  In TheGateWay Method we work with physical material, not digital, because our process is more than just a set of learning skills, it’s a strategy for brain-training.  In TheGateWay Method we see learning skills like organization, note-taking, and text-marking as physical manifestations of a cognitive process.  As you learn to physically organize your materials and WORK with new knowledge you engage your brain in a different way. 

Think of it this way… why did you have to write out 2+2=4??  Why did you need to write out your long division and two column multiplication?  Do you still need to write it all the way out or can you work it out in your head??  Why do we want elementary kids to work with manipulatives when learning “number-sense”??  Because there is a very CLEAR mind/body link.  We evolved to manipulate objects in space to help us have a sense of them and build understanding and that influenced our brain development.  People who were better able to develop their cognition through physical manipulation were better able to survive… and here we are.

In TheGateWay Method we work with riddles and puzzles, but there is a very specific WAY we “work” with them.  In my teaching practice I have seen kids come up with (what they thought) was a good answer but refuse to share it with the class.  When I asked what had caused them to lose confidence in their response they said:

“I didn’t realize that I hadn’t thought it out until I wrote it down.”

The mechanical process of writing out their reasoning is what revealed the flaw, and over time I’ve seen the same kids develop their reasoning skills… through this process… and become better thinkers.  I don’t THINK this works… I’ve SEEN it work for multiple students over multiple years.

The same can be said for Cornell-Notes, Text-Marking, Goal Setting and Tracking, and Self-Assessment strategies, these skills have proven successful in practice, not just in theory.  Kids who practice these strategies and develop these skills become better learners, better thinkers and better decision makers.

At AtoZ Learning Solutions we believe that building cognitive skills through physicality is a key feature to improving educational outcomes and developing the next generation of learners. 

We hope you agree and will follow us on this journey as we help kids develop the independent learning skills that will keep them competitive in the 21^st Century.

The Problem with Public Education                                        By: TheMister (Tom Alden)

When you have thinkers from Jordan Peterson and Ben Shaprio on TheRight to Camilie Paglia and Jonathan Haidt on TheLeft agreeing that the American educational system has undergone a serious and damaging shift LEFT starting in about 2015… it’s important to pay attention.  It’s undeniable that the philosophy in the University classroom will eventually find its way into K-12 classrooms… and those teachers will inevitably become administrators and district officials.  It’s well past time that someone comes up with a way to address this problem effectively.

Hello, I’m TheMister… and I’m here to help.

Consider, for a moment, that the American Public Educational System is (basically) an industrial learning model, built on an agricultural calendar and overseen by a government bureaucracy and you’ll begin to understand why it’s such a mess.

What is an “Industrial Learning Model”??

All kids taught the same material in the same way with marginal “differentiation” and virtually NO “personalization”.  The teaching targets the “average”… the middle of the bell curve… with a bias towards the lower performing students.  The high achievers don’t get challenged for fear of losing the low achieving kids.  In contrast, the low achieving kids tend to get more attention because the high achievers can usually take care of themselves.  The way it tends to end up is: If the needs of the bottom 10% are met… the top 10% get an easy “A” because if the needs of the TOP 10% are met… the bottom 10%, struggle, fail and become disruptive.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease because there simply aren’t the resources (mental or physical) for teachers to do otherwise.

Why an “Agricultural Calendar”??

Why do we have summers off?  For the same reason that Centre County, Pennsylvania has made the first day of hunting season a day off of school, Osceola County, Florida cancels school on “Rodeo Day” and Athens, Georgia takes off the Friday before the Georgia/Florida game.  Holding school on a day that nobody is going to be there is a waste of time and money… so why bother.  Traditionally, the summer break was during harvest time.  It was also a time that families would flee the cities because of the heat.  In the modern era these past justifications don’t apply and the damage that a prolonged absence has on low-income kids makes it’s continuation problematic.  So why continue the practice??

In a word?  Bureaucracy.

How does a “Government Bureaucracy” cause problems??

How does a government bureaucracy NOT cause problems?  When was the last time a bureaucracy could be called “effective” or “efficient”?  Regardless of the justification for establishing a bureaucracy in the first place, the inevitable result of any bureaucratic system is it becomes top-heavy, bloated and self-justifying.  If the bulk of bureaucratic power is at the local level it’s easier for the community to keep it under control.  However, as the bureaucrats become less and less members of the community it becomes, naturally, less accountable.  In fact, remote bureaucracies give local bureaucrats an easy excuse for policies that the local community disagrees with.  “Hey, don’t blame me, it’s a State mandate.” 

How the schools do actual harm.

If you think the school's primary concern is the best interests of your child or the welfare of your child, you are wrong.  It's not that the school doesn't care; it's that the school can only care so much.  If your child's interests conflict with the school's interests, your child will be sacrificed.  The best interest of your child only matter if they coincide with the best interests of the school.  For example, is it in the child's best interest to be in a classroom with peers that are more than one standard deviation above or below their academic achievement level? 

If you have “A” students and “F” students in the same class the difference in ability level will prevent either one group or the other from being academically successful or maximizing their academic potential.  If a third of the class is “high performing”, meaning:  good readers, good writers, effective communicators, clear thinkers… and so on… while one third of the class is at the low end of the scale (Poor readers, poor writers, virtually incapable of following simple instructions) OR they refuse to put in even a minimal effort and prefer to cut-up and clown… guess who ends up being sacrificed?

That's right… the high performing students… but do you understand WHY??  It's not because the teachers don't care about the more capable kids.  It's that they simply do not have the resources available to address the needs of both the high achievers and the low achievers at the same time in the same class and the more academically capable students can take care of themselves. At the end of the day they know they’ll be judged based on overall achievement of the class, so as long as they can keep the failure rate below 10% they’ll be fine.  As a result they don’t challenge the top 10% because they have to spend so much time keeping the bottom 10% from failing.

Follow the Money

It's all about the funding, it's all about test scores, and it’s all about administrative bureaucrats holding their jobs and school districts keeping the families in the dark about the real failures of American public education.  What about the teachers, what do they do, what CAN they do?  They do the same thing… they look out for their own interests and they protect themselves, their jobs and just try to survive the best they can.  The classroom teachers are the expendable assets in the educational system.  As students fail, teachers take the blame because parents don't want to accept the blame and neither do the students.  The students say that they're doing their best even when the teachers have evidence that they’re NOT… but nobody wants to see the evidence.  Everyone asks the teacher what THEY can do… nobody tells the kid to work harder.  In the end, teachers are held responsible for variables they can’t hope to control. 

There are still good teachers

A lot of teachers try to do the best job that they can under the circumstances, they damage their health, spend money out of their own pockets, sacrifice time with their families… many of them are true heroes.  However, over time, the conditions in the schools have continued to deteriorate.  The job is getting harder, the responsibilities are mounting and there is growing pressure to do more with less every year.  At the same time, the standard for what makes a “good job” is getting lower and lower.  Many teachers are finding they simply cannot live under those conditions anymore and simply walk away while the parents who understand what the real situation is in American public schools (and who are able) are pulling their kids out in droves.

Big Government can’t solve a local problem

The increased centralization of education hasn’t helped.  “Race to the Top”, “No Child Left Behind”, “The Elementary and Secondary Education Act”… efforts from the Federal Department of Education and national law-makers have failed over and over while efforts at returning power back to the states and families through a “voucher” system have been resisted by both politicians and teachers unions.

Even “Common-Core” started as a state initiative that was hijacked by the federal government.  Many states were offered federal money to adopt Common Core and had federal funding pulled if they didn’t adopt the new learning standards.

According to groups like the American Principles Project the study of classical literature and presenting American history in its full context were replaced with the ideals of Social Justice informed by activist academic disciplines at the university level.  Many students of “gender studies” became certified teachers and brought their ideological bias into the classroom with little to no push-back from administration that had become more bureaucrats than leaders.

Politicians and activists insist that all we need is “more funding” but those increased funds rarely find their way down to the classroom teachers, instead they’re used to promote and hire academic “coaches”, deans and administrators... in sort… it serves to grow the bureaucracy.  Eventually they exist simply to continue to exist, their purpose become perpetuation.

How to solve the problem, and the problem with the solution

The problems we have with public education will never be fixed by the bureaucracy.  A bureaucracy cannot reform itself… and they don’t voluntarily return power to the community.  The only way for the American people to fix public education is to remove their children from public education.

The problem there is, as more people pull their kids out to home-school or move their kids into charter schools or private schools the bureaucracy will move to make such actions more costly or difficult.  Regulations will be put into place to prevent parents from homeschooling and as demand for educational alternatives increase the cost will go up because the bureaucracy will make it difficult to open NEW schools or expand existing schools.  Just take a look at how New York is fighting against charter schools that are outperforming the regular public schools.  Look at the efforts of the Obama administration to close charter schools and the hate that Betsy Devos got for advocating school choice.

A voucher program has been advocated for decades, Milton Friedman talked about the need for it in the 70’s… but very little progress has been made because the bureaucracy will NOT, willingly, surrender power.

So now… we’ve examined how the American Public Educational System can be (accurately) classified as an industrial learning model, built on an agricultural calendar and overseen by a government bureaucracy… and the problems that are created by this arrangement. 

NOW… what can we do about it??

Stay tuned