Children's natural curiosity should be more adequately satisfied, resarch has suggested--especially in grades 4 to 6. Traditionally, the scope and sequence approach which is a learning-what-others think or have thought rather than a learning-to-think-for-oneself method begins during the middle school years. It is interesting to observe that thinking has been found to be a common phenomena among young people outside the school but not in the classrooms. By the time most have become adults they have largely stopped thinking. It has been claimed by Hofstadter that United States society as a whole devalues thinking except under certain controlled circumstances. The task of developing soundly educated (thinking) people is therefore not simply a school task: it is also a societal task. Even though educators need to be careful to avoid superficial understanding and superficial implementation, there is much opportunity, for individual teachers especially, to explore and experiment with thinking experiences in their classrooms. An experience that involved devising a plan to help educators improve social studies education in grades K through 12 is here recounted in this paper. (BZ)