They Say There are No Silly Questions . . . I Beg to Differ

They are saying there aren’t any silly questions, however I urge to vary. We hear silly questions virtually each time adults and younger youngsters are collectively. 

As an illustration, a baby is portray at an easel, exploring shade, form, and movement, experimenting with brushes, paper, and paint. There may be an grownup watching over her shoulder who factors and asks, “What shade is that?”

It is a silly query. 

This is one other instance: a baby is taking part in with marbles, exploring gravity, movement and momentum. An grownup picks up a handful of marbles and asks, “What number of marbles do I’ve?”

The grownup already is aware of the reply. The kid most likely does as properly, during which case, the grownup is distracting her from her deep and significant research with the intention to reply to a banality. Or she would not know the reply, during which case the grownup is distracting her from her deep and significant research to play a guessing recreation.

In a second, these silly questions take a baby who’s engaged in testing her world, which is her correct function, and turns her right into a check taker, pressured to reply different individuals’s questions moderately than pursue the solutions to her personal.

If it is necessary that the kid know these particular colours and numbers at this particular second, and it most likely is not, then we must always do the affordable factor and easily inform her,”That is purple,” or “I’ve three marbles.” If it isn’t new data, and it most likely is not, she’s free to disregard you as she goes about her enterprise of studying. If she did not know, now she does, in context, as she goes about her enterprise of studying.

This is among the best offenses we commit towards youngsters in our present academic local weather of testing, testing, and extra testing. We yank youngsters away from their correct function as self-motivated scientists, testing their world by asking and answering their very own questions, and as an alternative drive them to turn into check takers, occupying their brains with our silly questions.