Response to “The Virtues of Not Knowing”
I thought this reading was very interesting. The author of this passage seems to be an educator who obviously values the process and thinking used in reaching the answer to a problem over the problem itself, which is something I also hold as important in the teaching of students. He points out that knowing the right answer in an almost automatic way is much too overrated; the actual act of “figuring it out” isn’t counted like the answer to a problem known ahead of time. I think these are all excellent points he makes. It made me start wondering how, as a teacher, I will put emphasis on my students’ ability to figure out problems over just knowing the correct answer in a thoughtless way. It caused me to go back and think specifically about math teachers I’ve had who awarded points on tests, quizzes, etc. based on how you worked through a math problem (such as giving you partial credit if some of the work shown was correct or if you were using the correct thinking to solve the problem but somehow arrived at an incorrect solution) and how much this helped in those math classes! They made it more about knowing how to work the problems, which is what we ultimately want our students to know and remember whether it’s math, science, english, logical thinking, etc. I really enjoyed reading the example of the 6-year old and the different size glasses test. It was such a wonderful example of a child really learning and figuring the problem out! Students will remember something so much more if they are able to play a big role in reaching the solution instead of it just being handed to them to memorize. I also enjoyed reading the example of “Alec”; it really reminded me of the discussion we had in class Wedesday about light. Just like in this story, when students start sharing, fewer are scared to share their own ideas about why or how something’s happening (or in our case, going to happen). When the idea sharing starts, it allows students to scrutinize, question, etc. others’ and their own ideas, which leads to getting closer and closer to figuring out the given problem. In my opinion, this is an extremely effective way to conduct a science class as it gives the students an opportunity to arrive at a solution while developing ideas they never thought they could ever have! In this way, you actually make the student feel like the scientist.
mrsdudley 
Hi Kirby,
FYI, the author is a she (not a he). Her name is Eleanor Duckworth. Isn’t it funny how our default assumption is often to assume a male? I’ll tell a story about this in class, if you remind me.
You mention here how you are starting to think about how you, as a teacher, will emphasize figuring it out (rather than just emphasize answers). That’s really cool. Eleanor seems to suggest in the chapter that there “nothing particularly subtle” about what the adults were doing to make this possible. Do you agree with her? What do you think the adults might have been doing to make this possible? How might that be different than adults often do with children in school?
Haha, oops! I do agree; I think in both scenerios the teacher was helping promote this thinking process by actually not helping. With the first boy, the teacher let him decide what was going on and what was going to happen even if he was wrong. And the same with the story of Alec, the teacher let the class discuss the topic without saying who was right and who was wrong. So in both these situations the students figured out the problem on their own instead of the answer being handed to them to memorize, which is what adults in school too often do. They interject and correct the students who have the wrong idea much too fast.
Great point! I was thinking the same thing, when one starts discussing it opens the doorway for others to feel comfortable and join in too.
I agree with you on that is how a science class should be conducted but other classes can be as well. As one of my wise professors once told me, “I will never tell you you are wrong, I will only ask how did you come to that answer”.
Kirby,
It’s funny that you immediately thought of your math teachers giving you credit for working out the problems, because that’s exactly what I thought of while reading that article! Honestly, I always seemed to enjoy the classes where the teachers gave credit for trying the problem even if the answers were not always right. It made me feel like they were proud of me for my attempts rather then just getting the end result as a whole. I also thought of participation grades in classrooms. We always see participation grades as an easy way to make an A, but really that should be a large percentage of our grades. When a student is actively participating in a classroom discussion, activity, experiment, project, etc, the student is actively learning. I think we should take a more serious approach to participation grades in our classrooms.
I agree with you, it was really neat to read about the little boy filling up the classes and thinking he had the right answer and then requestioning to finally find the right answer. I like the idea of making an assumption as to what is going to happen and then working with groups to come up with ideas. Working in groups allows students to hear and think about different ideas that might not have been thought about before making the person question their original thought.