November 10

Questioning and Genius

I was reading a quick blog about the 12 genius questions here http://12most.com/2011/11/07/12-genius-questions-world/ It made me think about some of the assumptions that we hold as a society and that I personally hold.

I think that one of the basic assumptions that we hold is that smart people know lots of stuff.

Is that assumption true?

The more I think about it the more I think it is not. Smart, intelligent, bright, and or genius people are people that know how to find out things! This means not that they know stuff already, but that they know how to ask questions in order to discover something. This implies curiosity. Who is more curious than young children? Does that mean that young children are the smartest people in our society? This is certainly a view of the world that is unconventional.

If we agree that curiosity and questioning are skills that demonstrate inteligence, what happens to kids when they are in school? It doesn’t take long for students to learn that correct answers are valued and that asking quesstions and being curious lead to incorrect answers and negative attention. They stop being curious and asking questions? Are we making kids dumber in school? Can we instead value the questions they ask and teach them how to discover the correct answer? Is this not the way to teach people to become smarter?

The old saying is that if you give a man a fish he is hungry in a day but if you teach a man to fish he will feed himself for a lifetime. If we extend that metaphor to the classroom, then we should be teaching students how to question and discover the correct answer. Teaching them the answer is like giving them a fish.


Posted November 10, 2011 by mrdale in category Uncategorized

About the Author

I am a teacher and Team leader in cetral Alberta. I am interested in educational technology and how social networking can, and is going to change education.

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