My colleague and close friend, Professor Fred Goodman here at the University of Michigan, suggested replacing the phrase “in the choices they face in seeking their goals“ with “about their goals and how to achieve them.“

He indicated that such a change would direct attention to making good decisions about goals as well as strategies for achieving them -- a feature of EQUATIONS, WFF 'N PROOF, and other resource-allocation games that he has always admired.

Professor Goodman's insight about this aspect of EQUATIONS, WFF 'N PROOF, and other resource-allocation games, is certainly squarely on the mark. In the play of such games, participants get lots of practice in making decisions about choosing good goals and in seeing that what will be a good goal is highly dependent upon context. In the case of these resource-allocation games, the context will be what resources are available and the knowledge and motivations of the other players. Judgments about optimal use of resources and about other players are both crucial in playing these games well.

I have to confess that in my own thinking in creating EQUATIONS and the other resource-allocation games, I have always thought of them as being primarily directed at how to think, rather than as at what to think. Despite the fact that in such games as EQUATIONS and WFF 'N PROOF, players are encouraged to think a great deal about what goals to choose, that encouragement is primarily in the form of how to think intelligently about what is a good goal to choose in the first move of a game.

In the much broader context of choosing goals in life, the emphasis upon how to think, as opposed to what to think, seems even more appropriate. The fundamental reasoning skills, which ALF is seeking to stimulate, are aimed at enabling learners around the globe to more effectively succeed in reaching their goals -- whatever those self-chosen goals are.

This is not to say that the how and what of thinking are completely independent. Better thinkers are probably more likely to choose better goals.

Layman E. Allen, Chairman, ALF