Letting kids ask questions is a step to creating leaders

To teach children to question, think and work out answers will raise a generation of inventors rather than followers

- Shonali C. Chinniah

Years ago, when I was 8, I asked my father why there were purple splotches on one wall outside and not on the wall perpendicular to it. "Well, let's find out," said my dad, and we spent some time walking around the house to figure it out.

There was a jamun tree to one side and two tall buildings to the left and right of it. A mild breeze hit our faces and the leaves in the tree rustled. I figured out that the wind blowing between the two buildings, hit the tree and then the wall. When there was a strong wind, it would blow jamun fruit off the tree and—splat!—onto the wall. This little discovery has stayed with me all these years, not because it would change the world, but because it was a question I asked, puzzled over and solved, for the most part, by myself.

When children ask a question, they are engaged, curious, and most importantly, learning. In India, we teach our children how to answer questions to “crack exams”. We don’t teach them how to think, to consider what might be a good answer rather than the correct answer, and arrive at it.