• WHO
In New York on 17 November, 1979, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson and Edward de Bono founded the School of Thinking (SOT) in the USA. From the first meeting in New York, SOT went on to become the biggest nationwide program in the world ever to teach thinking skills to education, business and public sectors.
For eight years (1977 to 1984) Dr Hewitt-Gleeson and Edward de Bono collaborated to launch a project to get THINKING taught in schools as a school subject. This was the Learn-To-Think Project and was first published in their textbook The Learn-To-Think: Coursebook and Instructors Manual, ISBN 0-88496-199-0 which was co-authored by Hewitt-Gleeson and De Bono in 1982.
Their original textbook on thinking skills was featured as a cover story on all global editions of Readers Digest (article entitled Seven Steps to Better Thinking, April 1983) with a readership of 78 million readers in 70 countries and published in 21 languages. This global publication event was the widest ever distribution of thinking skills and remains so to this day.
To advance this project they created and co-owned several corporate entities: Edward de Bono & Associates Inc, New York (1977), The Cognitive Research and Training (CoRT) Foundation Inc, New York (1983) and The Edward de Bono School of Thinking Inc, New York (1983).
In 1983 they developed The Six Thinking Caps method for teaching thinking skills. In the Preface of a recent edition of Six Thinking Hats Edward de Bono acknowledges that their thinking hats method “may well be the most important change in human thinking for the past 2300 years”.
In 1984, they agreed to separate their business partnership. Since then they have both independently operated successful programs for teaching thinking skills.
Dr Hewitt-Gleeson continued with the School of Thinking and remains Principal. In Melbourne, Australia, in 1995 he established the School of Thinking as the first school on the internet. In 2011 SOT lessons were sent out to members in more than 51 countries.
September 8th, 2011 at 5:40 am
Improving my thinking and learning how to teach others to improve theirs is a win win for everyone involved.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
At last I found the right place to start with my dream. So far, I was wondering, how am I going to help my people at the rural villages develop their thinking skills. Now no worries, I hope. Dear Sir/Madam, hope to get your kind support throughout my service.
Warm regards
Sashi
April 16th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Thanks for registering me, and I look forward to improve my thinking to better contribute to Society.
March 4th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Hello, Dr. MICHAEL HEWITT-GLEESON.
I’m Jinyoung Song.
I work for Kumsung Publishing Company in Korea.
I recently got to know SOT and was surprised at this program.
I’d like to use this method(e-mailed lessons) for writing courses in our company.
By the way, we have to make a profit while you provide lessons for free.
So I want to know how to manage this site.
Does government only support this site, or do many corporations have donated?
I wonder how you earn a profit.
In addition, I don’t know whether you offer feedback to all of responses.
I want to know many good sites like SOT as business models for online study site, so I’m writing this mail to you.
If these questions are not your secret, please answer them.
Thank you very much.