Questioning is the heart of human learning. In listening to a motivational speaker one evening, I learned that children under the age of six laugh an average of 250 times a day. That piece of trivia triggered a question in my mind, “How many questions do children ask?” My mind was off, contemplating what might be the answer to that wondering. Young children question often, maybe as often as they laugh.

I am reminded of a summer afternoon walking along the creek that borders my yard, my preschool granddaughter’s hand in mine. She wondered aloud, “Neema, my brain is asking me why do your birds [White China Geese] sit on the grass when it’s so hot outside, but in the winter, they float in the water?” Wow!! Where did that come from? I had never noticed that before; now, I never not notice!

Though I had no answer, I began to contemplate why that might be…and I have shared this story countless times. Today, I think I have an answer. But the point of questioning is not so much what the “right” answer is, but the provocative power of the question to generate discussion, to activate prior knowledge, to make connections and create vivid imagery.

As educators, we too often do our students a disservice. We teach them to sit quietly in rows and wait for us to ask the questions. But it is not our questions that really matter; theirs are the questions that need to be addressed. If we listen, we may even discover that their brains are asking bigger and better questions than we had ever imagined. We must reteach our young people how to question, and we must create an environment that validates questions and not just “right answers.”