Authors: KP Mohanan and Tara Mohanan The purpose of this document is to help secondary school students: ~ go beyond the mechanical skills of calculation to produce correct answers without the foundational understanding and abilities; ~ understand the concept of equations in arithmetic, and other related concepts; and ~ develop the ability to reason using equations. Our hope is also that the discussion here would help parents and teachers to guide primary school stude

ThinQ announces a three-day Workshop on Constructing Scientific Theories from 21–23 May 2026 in Coimbatore. Most systems of school education in India are designed to help students to learn correct answers to examination questions. They also train students to provide correct answers at high speed, without thinking or reasoning: Multiple Choice Questions to be answered in two minutes or less do not allow scope for thinking or step-by-step reasoning. Prompted by the recommendati

The conversation on 14 March explores the origin and history of written examinations in systems of education, as a way of understanding the implicit purpose and function of education, by examining the broad outline of the evolution of the system of institutionalised education from the ancient times to the modern times. Within that broad outline, the origin and evolution of the system of written examinations is only one of the strands of the curricula of institutionalised educ

The conversation on 7 March explored the concept denoted by the English word freedom , and the cluster of concepts associated with it. Conceptual inquiry — the investigation of concepts — is one of the corner stones of philosophical inquiry. Here is the announcement of the topic of the conversation: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau “A human is never born free; first, it is in the parental chain, then the family chain, and then the so

Many research questions and knowledge claims in academia crucially involve the concept of causality: causal relations, causal...

This document examines the Relation between Learning and Education

By K P Mohanan and Tara Mohanan This document examines different sources sources of knowledge like sense perception leading to...

The goal of this document is to give the readers an understanding of the distinction between mathematical inquiry and scientific inquiry.

This article aims to provide learners a broad understanding of the concepts of knowledge, fact, and truth.

For an educational reform that aims to implement the goals of Higher Order Cognition and Educatedness, we need to transform syllabi and more

Reading lots of books doesn’t necessarily make you wiser. To make the most of 'reading', we have come up with a structured approach.

The Systematic Destruction of Thinking Capacity

This is a fourth in a series of dialogues on Constructing and Evaluating Knowledge. This continues from the previous dialogue and discusses

This is the third dialogue in a series on Constructing and Evaluation Knowledge. In this dialogue, Rafa and his mother Samira discuss the re

An argument may make a logical conclusion given a set of premises, but the premises themselves may not be considered acceptable. Similarly,

A counterexample is an example that refutes a claim. This article works through examples of counterexamples and includes some exercises for

What are logical contradictions? This article explores this question through examples. It also leaves you with some exercises to work on.

By Madhav Kaushish Representation and Abstraction We can gather a lot of information about a person's appearance by looking at a picture...

What are the foundations of rational inquiry in scientific assumptions?

K. P. Mohanan, Tara Mohanan This book is an attempt to introduce the reader to the art and craft of theory construction. While we use...