Learning to think has not been of great importance to our educators. And it still isn’t. They say that thinking is as simple as breathing. And so anyone by birth can have this skill.

Learning to think is something that must be learnt with effort. Even an intelligent person has to learn this skill, but, "according to my experience," says Dr. Edward de Bono, "most schools don’t teach how to think at all".

Thinking is the human quality of excellence. The educator must, as a priority, develop that skill in his/her students. And this must be done in a significant magnitude, if a country is serious about 'leaping' towards the status of [a developed country].

These were and are the reasons why an elite group of teachers, within the private sector, set out to bring the best there is in this field to the Dominican Republic. So Dr. Edward de Bono was contacted.

Dr. de Bono runs the largest programme in the world for teaching thinking as a subject matter in schools. It is something that has been tried for more than twenty-five years with different ages, teachers and situations. |It has been amply proven.

In the beginning of July 2000 the first steps were taken. As of now, 230 very valuable, local, teachers have been trained as Associate Trainers in this methodology and are starting to spread and multiply the teaching of thinking significantly.

In November 2000 (13^th - 19^th) a first group was trained. In March 2001 (19^th – 24^th), a second and a third. In 2002, three more groups have been trained.

Initially the emphasis was on publicising and promoting the idea. Groups were chosen with care. They worked in 119 primary and secondary education centres, and in five universities.

As a result of such a 'sowing', two years later two local universities have already introduced the teaching for all of Dr. de Bono’s methods in their centres.

The APEC University now requires all its first year students to learn the main tools of the CoRT 1 and CoRT 4 courses, as well as the Six Thinking Hats. In April 2002 forty psychologists and orientators have been trained to carry out this task, together with the first 30 teachers. They have already started training their students.

The State University (Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, UASD), with a 100,000 students, trains all its first year students in these methods as part of a subject called Professional Orientation. Some 45 orientators and psychologists in this University have been trained for this. In the following months, new batches of UASD psychologists and orientators will join these 45 pioneers.

Both the UASD and the UNAPEC courses have been organised by the Training Centre run by Peter de Bono in Oxford. For the work in the Dominican Republic, Peter de Bono brought as an assistant a Spanish doctor, Dr. Lucas González Santa Cruz, who in the future will continue to train teachers in our country, as well as to supervise and to assist them.

There have been bad practices in similar initiatives developed in some [other] countries. These have consisted in using some of the brilliant ideas by Dr de Bono and adding to them quite a lot of their own inspiration. This has motivated something in the Dominican project: to guarantee the orthodoxy to the maximum. To this end Peter de Bono’s Centre in has been present at all five courses. Peter de Bono, appointed by his brother Dr. Edward de Bono, leads the Centre to guide the whole world in this task.

Two schools – both of them teaching primary and secondary education, and both dependent on University APEC (UNAPEC) – will offer these tools to all their students. There’s a plan for August 2002 to train all the teachers in both schools.

The Dominican project plans to train 10,000 local teachers in the next three years.

The first group of specialised local instructors [Fully Authorised Trainers] will make it possible to attain this goal. All these specialists, trained to become instructors’ instructors, have been previously evaluated and accredited by the main 'de Bono Centre' in Oxford.

During the next decade these 10,000 teachers will have given our universities a million youngsters with a new academic skill: the facility to think and to be extremely creative.

The specialised group of trainers will increase its number to some 30 by the end of 2002. A year of practice with their students has given them the experience they need. And once they have this practice, they will opt for full accreditation through the Oxford office. This office will accredit them as Fully Authorised Trainers to train other trainers. They will probably get this accreditation by November 2002 after proper evaluation.

Contacts have been made to establish these ideas, after August, in three more universities within the Dominican Republic. These are not just wishes. There has been much discussion regarding this. It is planned that this training is to be given to all new teachers in the public [state] sector: it will be offered through the teachers training colleges and [also] in the practical and actualisation programmes for teachers.

The group of [Fully Accredited] Trainers that has been created in the Dominican Republic is ready to train Spanish speaking trainers in the region. To this aim we will use the best teachers we have. We are still in the planning stage, but we have already received requests from teachers in Perú, Guatemala, Bolivia and Argentina. This work will be done with the authorisation and under the guidance of the main centre led by Peter de Bono in Oxford. APEC University’s Rector supports and encourages this activity and wants UNAPEC to give this service to other teaching centres both local and in neighbouring countries. This is the aim of the APEC University for the next four years.

Over the next few years, the elite group of Fully Authorised Trainers will supervise the work 10,000 teachers will be doing in this field. In a brotherly way, they will offer their colleagues help and technical assistance.

The courses will from now on be given in a concentrated way in the centres that request them. All the participants will be from that institution and several courses will be given so that all can receive them.

The Rector of the APEC University has authorised that these skills will also be offered, on a ‘gratis’ basis if there’s no international sponsorship, to teachers in the public sector where most of the country’s students study. These students have scant economical resources and this is a country where 60% of the population live in poverty levels.