Synthetic Thinking in Children

The kind of thinking that connects general principles to concrete instances cannot be taught in a mechanical manner. We must meet leaders within the pages of a book, if not in real life, to know what leadership is. A child who has read the biography of a leader absorbs those principles so that they become a part of herself. Most of us have reached adulthood without being given the opportunity to develop these thinking skills and our writing and speaking is correspondingly weak.