A highly intelligent person can take a view on a subject and use his or her intelligence to defend that view. The more intelligent the person the better the defence of the view…As a result, many highly intelligent minds are trapped in poor ideas because they can defend them so well.
– Edward De Bono

Students of all stripes arrive at faulty answers from time to time. When students make mistakes in questions well within their ability to answer, two common refrains from teachers are, “check your work” and “read carefully”.
The equally well-worn reply from students would be, “I did check!” or “I did read!” This timeless exchange still exasperates all who engage in it.

When students emphatically declare that they conscientiously followed teachers’ advice to check their work and still got the answer wrong, we should believe them. There is no reason for a student to say such a thing if it weren’t true. After all, there isn’t and should never be any need whatsoever for students to try and impress teachers in any way.

The issue here, is not that they did not check or read carefully but that they did not know how to check or what “carefully” means. It is common belief that practised students make fewer ‘careless mistakes’. On the contrary, experienced students too, make such mistakes and as frequently, precisely because they are too practised.

It was fortunate, therefore, that in a recent lesson, a student wisely asked the right question, “What do we do when we still get the answer wrong even after reading and checking carefully? I checked till I was confident and still got it wrong in the end!”

Before continuing with our inquiry, it ought to be said that this student should be applauded for pressing the teacher to answer in a manner which accords with her true experience. Too many times, trite and inadequate advice is dished out and the burden of figuring it out is passed on to students. The worst consequence of this state of affairs is that students feel guilty for not having done right by themselves when in actual fact, the advice was faulty.

How do we “check our work”? Taking comprehension passages as an example, the typical process of arriving at an answer is as follows. The student reads the first time and forms a hypothesis (a reasoned view which may or may not be correct) about what a paragraph, sentence or word means. Forming a hypothesis comprises identifying relevant evidence and then deriving a conclusion from such evidence. Most students, especially conscientious ones, will at this stage, “check” the answer by re-reading or ‘carefully’ reading the relevant portion. Except what they do is not checking in its true sense. What they are really doing is confirming a conclusion and the reasoning which led to it. This is not checking. This is merely repeating a process, evaluating neither the process nor the result it yields.

To check an answer, we must have in mind, alternative conclusions which can be drawn from the same evidence – different perspectives or possibilities. Then, we need to use the context, co-text and everything else at our disposal at the time to narrow these alternatives and possibilities till only one conclusion remains which has withstood scrutiny.

Forming alternative conclusions on available evidence can be scary, tiring or humbling. For this to work, a student must have identified relevant evidence correctly in the first place. Forming several hypotheses on what isn’t evidence will be an exercise in futility.

Students might be unwilling to consider alternative possibilities because doing so might shake confidence, affecting focus during an exam. They might prefer to confirm rather than question the first hypothesis they arrive at, because this way, they enjoy a sense of security in their reasoning. Also, doing otherwise, might be time consuming and inconvenient. Students who have experienced a high degree of success in the past, might suffer from over-confidence in their analytical ability and so would not deign to consider alternatives. Finally, considering alternatives as a starting point is not natural and intuitive because of the way we have been conditioned to think.

Edward De Bono calls the process of considering alternatives, Parallel Thinking where, “both views no matter how contradictory, are put down in parallel”. “If later on, it is essential to choose between the different positions, then an attempt to choose is made at that point”.

Faultless logic would lead a blind man standing at the back of an elephant to conclude (confidently) the animal is of medium length and very thin, like a whip.

True confidence entertains doubt.

The Brain Dojo