Dustin's "What Would Socrates Say" Interpretation

In our section, the author describes his views that should be taken towards being 21st century minded. Also he states the key elements that should be approached in this process. In his article, “What Would Socrates Say?” the author Peter W. Cookson Jr. states, “The 21st century mind will need to successfully manage the complexity and diversity of our world by becoming more fluid, more flexible, more focused on reality, and radically more innovative” (Pg. 2). What the Cookson is saying here is that society needs to adapt to the changing times in the world, technologically. Cookson goes on to state three key ideas that he believes are crucial to become 21st minded. “Critical Reflection” (Pg. 2) is basically having an open mind and seeing different problems and solutions through others eyes and not just your own. “Empirical Thinking” (Pg. 2) is a responsibility that each one of us should have to solve the world’s problems collaboratively, instead of expecting a supernatural event to help us through situations. People need to step forward, assess the situations and together fix the problems at hand. Coming together and sharing generations of different intelligence is viewed as crucial by the author when he adds his last claim of “Collective Intelligence” (Pg3.) Cookson’s three points tie into his main idea in my section by stating that, “We will need an education system that doesn’t focus on memorization, but rather on promoting those metacognitive skills that enable us to monitor our own learning and make changes in our approach if we perceive that our learning is not going well” (Pg.3). Metacognition is the thinking about our own thought process. Cookson feels strongly that Metacognition skills are important to assess our own learning and to make changes to it if something isn’t working.