How do you and I know that what’s in our textbooks now is not just as critically flawed, because of some new, not yet developed truth?  What happens to our kids if we only give them the answers and the answers change?If we teach answers and the answers change, our kids are dead in the water.  If we teach them how to find the answers, even if those answers change,  which they surely will as technology progresses, they’ll be okay.  They’ll just find new answers, just like we taught them.

If we teach answers and the answers change, our kids are dead in the water.  If we teach them how to find the answers, even if those answers change,  which they surely will as technology progresses, they’ll be okay.  They’ll just find new answers, just like we taught them.

So bite your tongue while your students are exploring.  If you see that their reasoning is taking them in an obviously wrong direction, ask them questions that will point out why that direction is invalid, and let THEM find their own way.  Then the process, the learning and the knowledge are theirs and theirs alone.  It will be something that they have worked for, invested in, and can be part of their integrity and validation of themselves.  It is at that exact point in time that you will realize that you have changed the world for the better....one student at a time.