Topic > Adapting to Blindness in the Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks

In education, critical thinking is a student's ability to analyze and evaluate a problem with some specificity in order to reach a conclusion. Intelligence places limits on personal growth, but adaptability provides insurance for cases where experience has no effect because “you can rely on your ability to learn, and nowhere is this more important than when this that you have learned in the past is no longer sufficient for the future." future” (67). Teaching goes beyond strengthening intelligence; it is also a mechanism for developing critical thinking skills. Experience and memory have their limits in promoting systematic thinking, but the addition of adaptability gives an individual the drive to go beyond one's reach. Students have relatively few experiences that influence their education, but they have a fundamental need to evolve as human beings. This occurs when previous experiences can no longer influence a student's educational progress. There comes a time when it is necessary for a scholar to think beyond his own boundaries. Adaptability makes this possible because it allows an individual to change their mindset to fit their circumstances. Being a basic human need, adaptation does not need to develop, but a person must be placed in an environment where his adaptability can grow. Sacks discusses the memoirs of Zoltan Torey, a man who was advised to take a conventional approach to blindness therapy by shifting his focus to an “auditory adjustment mode” (332). Yet, instead of limiting his options, Torey “had moved in the opposite direction, deciding to instead develop his inner eye, his power of visual imagination” (332). If his attempt had been unsuccessful, Torey would not only have lost his ability to see, but he would also have lost any chance of developing his auditory sense as a form of compensation. Placed in a situation with limited options, Torey redefined his options