Learning Skills: Counterfeit Thinking versus Critical Thinking

Back in the mid 1990s, I contributed regularly at an annual conference on the teaching of problem-solving and thinking skills with the moniker, Problem Solving Across the Curriculum (PSAC) that was the brainchild of a friend of mine Dr. Daniel K. Apple, the President of Pacific Crest. The concept of the conference, which attracted mostly educators along with a few business executives and consultants, was that there is a common set of learning skills required to solve problems that is applicable across and independent of the specific subject matter being taught.


At the time, I was heavily engaged in corporate consulting and training. We were teaching problem-solving under the umbrella of Total Quality Management and World Class Manufacturing methods, the precursor to today's Lean and Six Sigma methods for problem solving and process improvement.

At the third PSAC Conference, I was a panelist at the plenary session on the topic of thinking skills along with Dr. Donald Bishko and Dr. Gary A. Woditsch co-author of The Thoughtful Teacher's Guide to Teaching Thinking Skills.

One of the topics we grappled with was whether or not you could in fact teach thinking skills. Dr. Woditsch contended that with few exceptions, individuals were capable of further development of their thinking skills. He countered the premise of the question by pointing out that we have “always” been teaching thinking skills as a byproduct of teaching subject matter.

Furthermore, Dr. Woditsch offered that two things that confused the issue. They were the lack of assessment around the effectiveness of the development of thinking skills -and- the ability of individual learners to develop coping strategies in place of thinking skills to produce "counterfeit" results. For example, rather than actually learning a skill, one can simply memorize a pattern and as long as the circumstances do not change significantly the pattern would yield a similar result.

My son Will was developing these coping strategies in 1st grade when it came to math. His teacher handed out worksheets where you first did the math in a “box” and then based upon the answers, colored the “box” to produce a pattern. William simply, figured out the pattern and skipped nearly all the math, as evidenced by the high percentage of incorrect answers in his work that was colored flawlessly.

There are many examples of counterfeit thinking and its limitations. Have you ever worked for someone who was promoted to being a manager because they were the best at following orders or getting tasks done? They often make dismal managers because the underlying pattern for success has changed. Even successful managers and businesses fail when the pattern of the marketplace or regulatory environment changes.

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Counterfeit thinking, the attempt to follow patterns that worked in previous and similar situations, is exactly what Einstein is speaking of.

The episode of the Simpson’s where a lobbyist suggests to Mayor Quimby and the community leaders that all Springfield needs to cure its problems is a “Monorail”, mocks the counterfeit thinking so often employed by politicians in their “pork barrel” funding of projects that have zero possibility of producing the results promised but follow the pattern of similar projects done elsewhere.

To read more about Seattle's Monorail, Check out Transit Miracle or Urban Toy.


As opposed to “counterfeit” thinking, the term "critical thinking" takes thinking in a focused and diagnostic direction as it means "thinking" directed at finding and examining that which is fundamental to understanding something. Critical thinking is about finding patterns not following patterns. The leap from thinking about something -to- developing an understanding of something is the same as the difference between standing on a pool deck and looking at an object on the bottom -and- diving into the pool, swimming to the bottom and examining the object down there.

The primary tool in critical thinking is "asking questions". When you work at developing "content rich" questions about something, you must examine and inventory that which you already know or assume that you know. In working out which questions need to be asked you seek questions that when answered will further your understanding.

Counterfeit thinking will lead you to dead ends and cliff faces but critical thinking will open doors and minds.