School of Thinking

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).

 


Leave a Comment




30 Responses to “OFFICE OF PRINCIPAL”


  1. antonio gonzalez Says:

    AN example of team work.

    Happy to be part of SOT.

    Thank you all

  2. Pat Says:

    It’s good to see there is opportunity and success in teaching others to think.

  3. GABRIEL REYES Says:

    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.

  4. Nia Paton Says:

    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.

  5. Lennie Says:

    Priviledged to be taking part in the SOT.

    Thank you.

  6. kenton Says:

    can’t wait for the rest of the material to be available for the kindle collection

  7. Jamie Says:

    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.

  8. beryl Says:

    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.

  9. Paul Bonet Says:

    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.

  10. Oluwatomisin Says:

    Amazing! This is what I have longed for. I know am on the way to a more meaningful living.

  11. Elizabeth Says:

    Great! proud to be part of SOT

  12. Kamran Says:

    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.

  13. Stu Says:

    Interesting. A solid history. But what else does this tell me?

  14. N J Rao Says:

    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.

  15. Don Says:

    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.

  16. Fadi Aboush Says:

    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.

  17. Patrick Connolly Says:

    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.

  18. DougT Says:

    Impressive history. Good to be part of it

  19. Paul Says:

    It is such a fundamental idea-teach people to think,,,,,the rest will follow K-12 education where are you?

  20. Erik Says:

    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.

  21. BEN OSEGHALE Says:

    wow! so good to know of you!

  22. Penny Fraser Says:

    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!

  23. Kim Says:

    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.

  24. Abdullahi m.ishaq' Says:

    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.

  25. Li Says:

    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.

  26. Panchasheel Says:

    Thanks a lot

  27. Paul Says:

    Improving my thinking and learning how to teach others to improve theirs is a win win for everyone involved.

  28. Sashikumar N.C. Says:

    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

  29. Lawrence Says:

    Thanks for registering me, and I look forward to improve my thinking to better contribute to Society.

  30. Jinyoung Song Says:

    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.