Get Out: Beautiful Questions

"Knowing the answers will help you in school. Knowing how to question will help you in LIFE."

Author Warren Berger asserts that "a more beautiful question = "the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas."  Berger's book, A More Beautiful Question, his website and his blog posts support inquiry as a mode for life, positive growth and innovation.

Years of teaching, raising my own kids and enjoying life as a learner, have taught me again and again that inquiry is indeed a catalyst for innovation. And years of teaching and playing in nature, with and without children or adults, have taught me that nature is one of the best catalysts for inquiry out there. Get out there, be present, open your mind...and those beautiful questions start coming.

Here is a beautiful question I've been asked over the years by hundreds of young people:

Why?

Why? is a constant companion when you take kids outside and start chatting about what you encounter. Adults somehow grow out of asking this question incessantly. If I sat at a meeting and asked, "Why?" as many times as a five-year-old does in 30 minutes, I might not have job anymore. We're adults, we are "supposed" to have more answers at this point, right? And it's either annoying, or embarrassing to keep asking, "Why? Why? Why?" And yet, innovation leaders like Google and Boeing lament the dearth of creative thinkers in the job gene pool-- but it's really no wonder, when you consider the weight we place on adult expertise and knowing.

Turns out true expertise is founded on an ability to keep asking questions and pushing to discover new, better ways to do stuff. The cure for smallpox, Netflix, refrigeration, the light bulb, the Model T and the Ford Foundation-- they all come to us courtesy of people who couldn't stop wondering, Why? Maybe innovators are people who listen and look even after they hear this answer:  "Because."



Any frustrated parent will sheepishly admit that "Because I said so," might be an answer, but it never tells the whole story. If you were really going to try to answer the question, "Why do I have to make my bed?" you'd have to unpack a whole bunch of stuff about teaching responsibility and order and how you had to do it, and somewhere in there you'd wonder:  Why do we make beds? And pretty soon, you're feeling like it's time to lay down on a couch and start telling someone all about your mother, who, suddenly, you seem to have become. And that leads to some very heavy thinking about how that happened. Pretty soon you've joined a long chain of parents throughout history, passing on traits, habits, values...you could write a book on this actually, and many have.



You'll notice that a question only gets beautiful--more interesting--if you invite it to. If you shut the door--"Because I said so"--instead of opening it, you stop that evolution. Thankfully, kids still haven't grown out of this Why? habit. A kid can be a dog with a bone when it comes to the Why? Here is a conversation I once had with my own daughter:

"Why is the mouse dead?"
"I think it ate the poison."
"How do you know?"
"Well, your dad put poison in the attic."
"Why?"
"To kill the mice."
"The mouse is so cute. Why did dad want to kill that mouse?"
"That mouse is cute, but we have too many mice in the house."
"Why?"
"Maybe they want to keep warm."
"Why can't we keep them warm?"
"It's not good to have mice in your house. Mice should stay outside."
"Why?"
"Because they carry diseases, and eat the electric wiring."
"Why?"
"They can get sick like people and I think they like to chew on things because their teeth keep growing, it's an instinct."
"If I get sick, I don't have to go outside. Will my teeth keep growing? Why don't I have an instinct to chew?"
"Well, you used to have an instinct to chew everything, when your teeth were first coming through your gums. You were teething, you tried to chew on everything-- even your books."
"Ew! Why do people's teeth have to come through their gums?"
"I think your teeth grow out of your jaw, the bone makes more bone maybe."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
"Do mice teeth grow through their gums first?"
"I don't know."
"Who knows?"
"Maybe people who study mice?"
"The mice know!"
"The mice must know."
"What do mice know?"
"Probably a lot."
"But they don't know what poison is!"
"That's true."
"Why not?"
"Maybe they can't smell it."
"They should just stay outside."
"They should."
"But then the owl will eat them."
"Maybe."
"If the owl eats 'em, will he die?"
"Why?"
"Does poison kill owls too?"



Of course the answer is, "Yes," which is why my husband and I stopped killing mice with poison. And a quick Google revealed that lots of studies have been conducted to chart the travels of rodent poison in the ecosystem-- turns out it can travel from my attic all the way to the Mississippi River and out into the Gulf of Mexico where it keeps killing other stuff. And my four-year-old arrived at the same hypothesis that teams of grown-up scientists were chasing. Beautiful questions, it seems, can lead to real change-- like me keeping poison out of the ocean.

So, Get Out, and keep asking questions. Start with one, and follow it. If you're heading out with young people, make a plan to "map" a question, any question.

• When you're outside, jot your questions down and keep talking.
• After some conversation and lots of wondering, settle down down somewhere, and see if you can visually map where that question takes you. 
• A big 'ol peice of paper will be grand for this, especially if you want everyone to pitch in and collaborate. Also, consider the mind-body benefits of such an activity:  when kids lay on their bellies or have to get up and move around a space to draw, and to contribute to a really big drawing, they are doing terrific things for their coordination, self-regulation and even strengthening the synapses in their brains! This activity requires some complex cognition, and social/emotional work with peers.
• In the mouse example above, you would start with the mouse in the attic...and keep going, right out to the Gulf.
• I think you'll find that mapping a question makes hypothetical thinking visible. If...then thinking is not only the key to thinking mathematically or parsing the plot of a story, it is a way to think creatively, to innovate! You may even notice that mapping one question leads to many hypotheses.

If you are not wandering and wondering with kids, try following one of your own questions as far as you can. This activity is guided daydreaming, and research suggests that daydreaming benefits you and your brain, providing you with some time to shake the shackles of executive function, ultimately improving your cognitive function when it's time to focus again. So wander, and wonder-- it's good for you!