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As we reported in the Autumn 2008 issue of ALCS News, the idea for the new ALCS-sponsored Educational Writers’ Award arose from concerns expressed by the Educational Writers’ Group of the Society of Authors that the content of many educational books is being pared down to the absolute essentials of what is needed to pass exams.

This completely undermines the process of intelligent reading, which is an important part of any rounded education. The new Educational Writers’ Award aims to celebrate books that buck this current trend for reductive textbooks.

This completely undermines the process of intelligent reading, which is an important part of any rounded education.

This year’s judges – teacher Vanessa Casey, librarian Laura Taylor and educational writer Mel Thompson – were asked to make the award for a book for the 12–18 age group. Their winner was The Little Book of Thunks: 260 Questions to Make Your Brain Go Ouch! by Ian Gilbert (Crown House). This instantly appealing and accessible little book packs a mean philosophical punch, being chock-full of “thunks”: thorny questions guaranteed to start a debate in any classroom, for example:

  • Is there more future or past?
  • Is it ever right to “blow your own trumpet”?
  • Would you rather be brave and poor or cowardly and rich?
  • Can you love someone and hate them at the same time?
  • Does the back of a firework look the same as the front?
  • When you comb your hair, is it art?

Winning author Ian Gilbert is a former French teacher who now runs Independent Thinking, an educational consultancy which provides speakers and programmes to bring the best out of young people and those who work with them, by focusing on thinking, learning, motivation and creativity. I asked Ian to consider some slightly less philosophical questions for ALCS News

How did you come to write the book?

I worked as a copywriter for a while until my career peaked with an ad in the Beano. Then I went into the teaching profession specifically to work with young people on thinking and learning skills. The whole idea of “thunks” grew out of my need to go into a classroom and get children thinking deeply and instantly. Many of the “thunks” in the book came out of sessions with children as young as five.

What are the particular challenges of writing a book aimed at teachers?

It has to be instantly accessible. I always have an image of a book in the drawer of their desk which they can pull out, flick through and use there and then to really get a group going. Unfortunately, many books for teachers aren’t like that, being either dense academic tomes or pages of worksheets: the sort of thing that will drive learners to pull out their own fingernails.

How do you come up with your “thunks”? Do they just fall into your head, or are they more deliberately arrived at?

I have absolutely no idea when I first had the idea of using questions like these or indeed of calling them “thunks”. They just grew out of the philosophical conversations I was having with children and then congealed into a book. Once you get into a thunks sort of mindset they leap out at you from all over the place. It’s hard to go through a mealtime without one coming into my head. So much so that my own kids make me eat alone.

It’s very difficult to copyright your thunks, and very easy for someone to pluck them from your books and website and use them as they see fit for nothing. Do you see this as inevitable?

But I also believe in giving stuff out to the universe to see what you get back.

I have trademarked the term “thunks” in the context of philosophical questions like these. But I also believe in giving stuff out to the universe to see what you get back.

My favourite book is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, which is about someone who comes up with original ideas and doesn’t care about the “second handers” who live off the ideas of others. If someone nicks an idea of mine, I’ll just come up with another.

What are you working on next?

I am writing a follow-up to my book Essential Motivation in the Classroom entitled Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google? Most importantly, though, I want to develop my writing beyond educational books. My goals for next year are to have some of my poetry published and write up the Around Deeply project that I started a few years ago, circumnavigating the British Isles in a yacht as a thinking skills exercise. And I want to write some fiction, based on my experiences dealing with the mental illness and subsequent tragic death of a close family member. I am moving to Chile next summer (long story), which has got be a great place to write.

“If you send a slinky down an escalator will it ever get to the bottom?”

I should also mention www.thunks.co.uk where people are adding their own thunks and responding to those suggested by others. My current favourite is: “If you send a slinky down an escalator will it ever get to the bottom?”

To coin one of your own thunks: Is Marmite nice, yes or no?

A big yes! And don’t let people fob you off with Bovril.

For details of this year's Educational Writers' Award administered by the Society of Authors and sponsored by ALCS, please visit the ALCS website.

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