The International Conference on Thinking® originally was conceived as a “Problem Solving” conference, not as an “Information dumping” conference. Unfortunately, many of the hosts after the Fiji Conference took the familiar and often boring pattern of “information sharing,” rather than the uncommon, more exciting, consultative, problem-solving format.

ICOT XIX will return to the “Roundtable, Consultative” pattern, attempted in 1982 in Fiji. The plenary sessions will be very short. Almost all sessions will be devoted to consulting on how to IMPLEMENT the solution found by Milton Friedman. There will be 21 Problem Solving Teams, composed of mature thinkers and younger thinkers approximately of equal numbers, no more than a dozen persons in each team:

The Teams will be mathematically formed by an algorithm created by our staff. That is, each team will have at least one person of high mathematical aptitude, one with a high scientific style of thinking, one whose thinking aptitudes are in the social or behavioral sciences, a person of musical or artistic aptitudes, and a person of high communication skills. Each team will be balanced by gender, age, and continental or cultural background.

Prior to the final selection, the finalists will take a ten-question open-book quiz on six of the basic books that are foundational to understanding the origins and remedies for racism: Those six books are:

• Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 1954
• St. Augustine, The City of God, 426 CE. (Sections dealing with slavery and bigotry)
• Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society, 1950
• Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962
• William Maxwell, SuperParenting, 2005
• Anne Roe, The Making of a Scientist, 1952

Each team will produce a proclamation or appeal that will be published for the guidance of all persons and institutions who wish to support a vision articulated by Plato, Confucius, and all the Messengers of God.

Prior to their deliberations, each member of each team will take six minutes to read or explain his or her short essay on the issue at hand. The appointed co-chairs will then invite the members of the team to proceed in an agenda proposed by the Persian historian Shoghi Effendi:

1. Agree on a definition of the problem
2. Agree on facts, THE RESEARCH, relating to the problem Agree on the philosophical or religious principles bearing upon the issue
3. Everyone expresses his/her opinion toward a resolution
4. Unanimous agreement on a statement “solving” the problem at hand.

[We believe that the final agreement can be reached in three days. Mutual reviews will follow on day four with final reports on day five.]

Team One: Stating Milton Friedman’s Remedy so carefully that everyone can understand it.

Team Two: Articulating and rebutting the objections to Professor Friedman’ Remedy

Team Three: Outlining an over-arching strategy for implementing Prof. Friedman’s Remedy

Team Four: Curriculum Goals for 3 ½ year-olds

Team Five: Curriculum Goals for 5 year-olds

Team Six: Curriculum Goals for 6-year-olds.

Team Seven: Curriculum Goals for 7-year old

Team Eight: Curriculum Goals for 8-year-olds

Team Nine: Curriculum Goals for 9-year-olds.

Team Ten: Curriculum Goals for 10-year-olds

Team Eleven: Curriculum Goals for 11-year-olds

Team Twelve: Curriculum Goals for 12-year-olds.

Team Thirteen: Curriculum Goals for 13-year-olds.

Team Fourteen: Curriculum Goals for 14 year-olds.

Team Fifteen: Curriculum Goals for 15 year-olds.

Team Sixteen: Outlining specific learning goals for physicians, engineers, mathematicians

Team Seventeen: Outlining specific learning goals for musicians, artists, research scholars

Team Eighteen: Curriculum for the new profession intimated by Professor Friedman’s

Remedy, depending upon background, The Educational Entrepreneur.

Team Nineteen: A Financial Design for such a Friedman-inspired Academy.

Team Twenty: Architectural Design for such an Academy inspired by Prof. Friedman

Team Twenty-one: Marketing Professor Friedman’s Remedy