How to Teach the Twelve Cognitive Processes 137 a hero is and what leadership is, and they can determine for them- selves who they know or have seen who is good at both. Again, real experiences and discussions are how one learns to think about this, but it must be done in an environment of possible truths, not prede- termined truths. One doesn’t create a nation of people who can think by telling them what they should think. Kids know who is the leader among them. They should learn to discuss what it is about their leader that makes them want to follow. This is difficult discussion to have with a 6-year-old, but it gets easier with age. Once again, asking kids to make judgments isn’t that unusual. Here is a remark from a parenting book that I happened upon: When adults praise their kids for smart judgments, the kids glow. But here’s the clincher: kids earn more and more freedom and independence when parents trust their judgments more and more.°® The issue here is, yet again, not whether kids make judgments, but whether they are taught, as a central part of what they study, how to make judgments. The cognitive processes depend on reasoning from evidence in a way that makes sense. This is not something people are naturally good at. They often exhibit faulty reasoning. Practicing reasoning means practicing within particular domains of knowledge. Reasoning is the same process no matter what you are reasoning about, but we don’t reason about nothing. Learning the actual facts is important, but it is the idea that this is important that has sent the school systems on the wrong path. Academics study the facts, as well they should, but they also teach the facts, which is a grievous error. How to determine the facts and how to determine their effects on a situation is what the processes of diagnosis, planning, and causation are all about. HOW TO TEACH INFLUENCE This is yet another childhood skill. Children learn how to influence their parents and their siblings and the