OFFICE OF PRINCIPAL
The current PRINSOT, Principal of the School of Thinking, is Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson. The Principal is the ‘content king’ of the School.
He is @hewi and The Invisible Mentor does a thoughtful interview with Michael here.
The Principal is the Fountain of Content who is personally and professionally responsible for the creation, selection, curation, publication, media and dissemination of a suitable stream of world class, evidence-based content for the daily consumption of the members of the school.
The current Principal has held and fulfilled that position for 33 years since 1979.
Co-founders Edward de Bono and Michael Hewitt-Gleeson
In New York on 17 November 1979, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson and Edward de Bono founded The Edward de Bono School of Thinking in the USA. Shortly after that, New York mathematician Dr Eric Bienstock, and Yale law graduate, Janie Noble, also became Founding Directors. These four directors were the primary stewards and builders of SOT during the first five years of The Edward de Bono School of Thinking from 1979 to 1984. 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 the current Principal (PRINSOT). In Melbourne, Australia, in 1995 he established the School of Thinking as the first school on the internet. In 2012 SOT lessons were sent out to members in more than 51 countries.
The first Chief Instructor (1980) and former Managing Director of the Edward de Bono School of Thinking in New York (1982) was Dr Eric Bienstock who is the current Vice-Principal of SOT.
The first Chief Instructor and former Managing Director of the Edward de Bono School of Thinking in New York was Dr Eric Bienstock who is the current Vice-Principal of SOT and assists the Principal.
Eric is a pioneer of thinking skills in the US and is widely known for his “3-Minute Thinking Method“.
In 1982 Dr George Gallup of the Gallup Poll at Princeton was Michael Hewitt-Gleeson’s mentor and Examiner for his PhD. He is singularly and permanently honoured as the Patron of the School of Thinking.
Dr Gallup said: “What the School of Thinking is doing, to teach people to think for themselves, may be THE most important thing going on in the world today.”
Mr Paul Cooke is Chairman of the School of Thinking. He has had a long association with SOT as a graduate and content champion, implementing X10 thinking in organisations both in Australia and internationally. He also holds the position of Chief Instructor SOT.
With a track record of managing diverse professional services firms, most recently as the owner of marketing communications business, Paul offers the School of Thinking a unique combination of corporate, strategy and marketing communications skills.
Along with Paul’s personal signature strengths it is also his Australian Army Officer leadership training and field officer experience which provides the vision, energy, thoughtfulness and corporate discipline to set, drive and deliver its strategic objectives.
The CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and Webmaster of the School of Thinking is Mr Jenks Guo. Jenks joined SOT in 2010 and is the future of SOT. Jenks has led the 2012 SOT Site Upgrade Project and has worked diligently for the past 18 months to understand the different idiosyncratic needs SOT has, as an online school, to that of a simple shopfront site. There are few webmasters who have that unique experience which he has had to earn the hard way. He has also worked on SOT China and our Weibo presence.
Jenks is multi-talented. While completing his Electrical Engineering degree at the University of Melbourne Jenks has been running The SOT Kindle Collection project. This project includes schoolofthinking/books plan to publish all the SOT works and archives. The collection will be available on Kindle. He has managed the publishing of the first two books: English Thinking: The Three Methods or ET 123 (a major title to sell for $9.95) and (the first of our SOT 99cent Library) The Story of the Edward de Bono School of Thinking (1979-1984).
May 21st, 2013 at 1:46 pm
AN example of team work.
Happy to be part of SOT.
Thank you all
May 8th, 2013 at 8:55 am
It’s good to see there is opportunity and success in teaching others to think.
April 23rd, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Certain the top of the top. HI qualifications I feel honored to be a student.
Time ago I read and practiced Seven hats and found very useful.
March 25th, 2013 at 3:20 pm
I feel very priveledged to have personally met Michael and be apart of this program. It has changed the way I look at everything in my life.
March 25th, 2013 at 5:53 am
Priviledged to be taking part in the SOT.
Thank you.
March 21st, 2013 at 11:08 am
can’t wait for the rest of the material to be available for the kindle collection
March 15th, 2013 at 2:01 am
My first reaction after reading this was that SOT is not in fact a school at all. However, SOT redefines the meaning of school, just as many nations around the world are redefining marriage.
March 12th, 2013 at 11:56 am
What an amazing, incredible group of people we SOT students have to teach/help us with our thinking methods . Thank you very much Dr. Michael and your team. Mr. Jenks Guo, thank you for this great user-friendly site.
March 7th, 2013 at 7:18 am
MIchael has been an inspiration from the first moment of knowing of him, let alone meeting him in person. I am eternally grateful for the efforts of the team as their efforts have assisted in moving me forward with pleasure and interest in the problem solving of my life.
February 22nd, 2013 at 9:33 am
Amazing! This is what I have longed for. I know am on the way to a more meaningful living.
February 20th, 2013 at 11:10 pm
Great! proud to be part of SOT
February 16th, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Very inspiring. I read Software for Brain 1 & 2 some 20 years ago and have been benefitting from the lessons even now. Thank you for good work you under took. As Hitler said, “It’s good fortune of governments that people don’t think” I think, it’s about time, people learn to think on their own.
January 29th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Interesting. A solid history. But what else does this tell me?
January 24th, 2013 at 4:44 pm
It is wonderful to have a School of Thinking and create resources and tools that help people and organizations to think. At many places institutions are resultant to introduce a credit course on thinking. I am hoping to see if metacognitive thinking can be weaved into science and engineering courses taught at colleges and universities. I am developing a course design process that is based on taxonomy table made up of cognitive dimension and knowledge dimension, for which I need an operative definition of ‘thinking’. I have not been able to find any in the literature associated with SOT. It would be nice if SOT has one such operative definition for thinking.
January 16th, 2013 at 12:02 pm
It is wonderful to have involvement, in any way, with such a legacy. With the unique approach the world can become a much better place, filled with people educated in how to think, producing better thoughts and better results.
January 12th, 2013 at 2:13 pm
Impressive history !!! I would love to see the SOT teachings spread to all our school systems here in the USA. If we could start this at the elementary school level – Wow! this thought is very exciting. I appreciate the opportunity of being involved in this program. Thank you.
January 9th, 2013 at 1:41 am
Congratulations on a wonderful achievement with the School of Thinking. I am going to buy your Coursebook and Instructors Manual. I intend to give classes on how to think. I, like you, believe that knowing how to think correctly is essential for humans today. So many people waste their lives because they are not able to interpret situations correctly and then deal effectively with them.
January 1st, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Impressive history. Good to be part of it
December 30th, 2012 at 11:03 am
It is such a fundamental idea-teach people to think,,,,,the rest will follow K-12 education where are you?
December 6th, 2012 at 5:35 am
I am not surprise with the current format of our website. A great improvements since SOT came to the internet I can remember how it was those days and in Ghana our network was dial-lap today we uses high speed broadband. Thank you Michael for your leadership and foresight.
December 5th, 2012 at 10:01 pm
wow! so good to know of you!
November 29th, 2012 at 7:09 am
Thankyou for such an inventive and sorely needed way of collecting thinkers from around the world. We have been bombarded with the world of social media which tells you what to think daily. This fills a gap where your imagination is still free and not controlled by the hyoe we see and hear daily in newpapers, TV and on radio. Although once we have acheived clarity of thought those mediums have no power over our senses any more!
November 27th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
I’m benefiting from the points of view of many thinkers you’ve worked with along the way. Thank you. A collision of minds can create many better views.
November 24th, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Its my pleasure Dr.michael,i am a nigeria young graduate of mechanical engineering technology!i was online happly i saw your program school of thinking(SOT).Which enhance my thinking ability to learn and mastered more.its a nice program indeed.i want to think like the founders of this great instituted more especially Edward de bono and michael Hewitt-Gleeson.throughly i must comfase that my learning ability had change.i am glad to have your by my side in order to create and mastered all being told by the founders.thank you ‘God’ bless.
November 13th, 2012 at 4:57 am
Impressive.
I was here because I want to improve my thinking skill…using the methods developed by the founders.
Good to know what one could do with the skill they have mastered. In the founders’ case, they created methods that others can use to improve their thinking skills.
November 7th, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Thanks a lot
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.