“The Virtues of Not Knowing”

I never considered the act of “knowing” a correct answer as a passive virtue, or how little credit is given to the non-passive act of searching for the answer (right or wrong), until reading this article.  I do believe in encouraging children to search for an answer instead of just “handing it to them” or encouraging them to rote memorization. I believe the act of searching for an answer, or even formulating a question, can provide more benefit and knowledge than the answer itself.

I have always encouraged my own children to try to find answers to their questions instead of just telling them the answer. I might point them in the general direction of the answer through guided questions or providing them with pieces of information that they can use to help guide them to an answer, even if it wasn’t correct. If they found a wrong answer we would work out together new questions to help them figure out why the got the wrong answer and how to get the correct answer.

For myself, I have found that being told how to get the correct answer (for example in math, being given the equations or told the steps to take to answer the problem) is much easier and requires less work than trying to figure it out on my own. Finding the correct question to ask, or working out the steps to answer the problem on my own, is much harder. Providing students with “quick access” to correct answers and rewarding  the correct answer instead of the search for the correct answer can discourage students and be more detrimental than beneficial.