“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think” is a saying that has been printed on many images. Authorship of the saying is uncertain, but it became popular in the late 1800s.
     
“School children, in and out of school should be taught how to think, not what to think, and the opportunity to see new objects should be afforded them” was printed in the Brooklyn (NY) Daily Union on July 15, 1872. “The coming educational doctrine that children should be taught how to think rather than what to think” was printed in the Omaha (NE) Daily Bee on January 21, 1894. “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think” was printed in the book Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a Religion of Natural Law (1896) by Stanley De Brath.
   
“Margaret Mead says a fine thing in her book, ‘Coming of Age in Samoa.’ ‘Children Should Be Taught How to Think, Not What to Think’” was printed in The Evening News (Harrisburg, PA) on February 22, 1929. American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) usually receives credit for the saying today, although the saying had been cited in print before she was born. This exact quotation does not appear in Mead’s famous book, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928).
     
   
Wikipedia: Stanley de Brath       
Stanley De Brath (10 October 1854 – 20 December 1937) was a British civil engineer, psychical researcher and spiritualist.
 
Career
Brath was born in Sydenham, Kent. He worked as a civil engineer in India for 17 years. He was most well known for his book Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a Religion of Natural Law, published in 1896. Alfred Russel Wallace had written an introduction for the book and considered it of “great lucidity, a philosophy of the universe and of human nature in its threefold aspect of body, soul, and spirit”. The book was expanded in 1908 and endorsed by Wallace in a prefatory note.
 
Wikipedia: Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and 1970s. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Barnard College in New York City and her MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University. Mead served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975.
       
Newspapers.com
15 July 1872, Brooklyn (NY) Daily Union, “Summer Education,” pg. 2, col. 2:
School children, in and out of school should be taught how to think, not what to think, and the opportunity to see new objects should be afforded them.
   
Newspapers.com
23 October 1889, Stockton (CA) Daily Mail, “Plutocrats on Their Ears,” pg. 2, col. 2:
Do not these wealthy gentlemen know—or have they yet to learn—that a college is a place where youth are taught how to think and not what to think?
 
Newspapers.com
24 October 1892, Grand Rapids (MI) Herald, “Church and State,” pg. 1, col. 4:
He (John F. Geeting—ed.) said: “By the use of the bible and forms of religious worship in the public schools children are taught how to think but not what to think.”
 
Newspapers.com
21 January 1894, Omaha (NE) Daily Bee, “How to Educate Children,” pg. 11, col. 1:
The coming educational doctrine that children should be taught how to think rather than what to think and that the continued training to expect absolute obedience converts them to mere dummies of putty-flesh lacking soul or character, is beautifully reflected in the following colloquy contributed to the columns of the Brooklyn Times by Ruth Trevelyan: ...
   
Newspapers.com
20 March 1894, Dundee (Scotland) Courier, pg. 6, col. 1:
I hear a great deal just now of the coming American education doctrine with regard to children. They are to be taught how to think rather than what to think.
 
Google Books
The Foundations of Success:
A Plea for Rational Education
By Stanley De Brath
London, UK: George Philip & Son
1896
Pg. 71:
We want to be taught how to think and how to act, not what to think and what to do.
 
Google Books
Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a Religion of Natural Law
By V. C. Desertis (pseudonym of Stanley De Brath—ed.)
London, UK: George Redway
1896
Pg. 257:
Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
   
12 March 1926, The Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia, PA), “Dr. Lewis Gives Delightful Talk at C. J. W. Meeting,” pg. 14, col. 3:
They must see that their children are taught “how” to think, not “what” to think, and that they are prepared to face the real examinations in life, the issues they must meet in the course of their adult careers.
(Dr. William Mather Lewis, president of George Washington University.—ed.)
   
Newspapers.com
22 February 1929, The Evening News (Harrisburg, PA), “Listen, World!” by Elsie Robinson, pg, 18, col. 3:
Margaret Mead says a fine thing in her book, “Coming of Age in Samoa.”
 
“Children Should Be Taught How to Think, Not What to Think.”
 
3 July 1929, Chicago (IL) Daily Tribune, ‘How to Think, Not What,’ Hailed Goal of Education in U. S.” pg. 13, col. 2:
Atlanta, Ga., July 2.—(AP)—The general sessions and a series of departmental meetings today stressed the purpose of the 67th convention of the National Education association—education for a new world.
 
Heading the list of reports to the general session was that of the propaganda committee, which held that all schools should be safeguarded against propaganda. Children should be taught “how to think,” not “what to think,” the report said.
 
Twitter
Michael Lee
@NavalBagels
Quote: “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” -Margaret Mead
6:12 AM · Jul 12, 2009·Twitter Web Client
 
Twitter
Nipun Singhi
@NipunSinghi
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead
7:13 PM · Sep 11, 2021·NIPUN TWITTER