We should teach students to ask the right questions

SCMP Education Mailbag - (Feb 21, 2009)

From the dean of science at HKU to the man in the street, I have yet to hear a compelling reason not to teach creationism next to evolution.

The point of education is less about giving students the 'right answers' than teaching them to ask the 'right questions'.

The response of Professor Kwok reinforces my sneaking suspicion that many Hong Kong educational establishments completely miss this most important aspect of education.

Schools and universities should challenge students' thinking constantly, break set ways of perceiving things and stimulate young people's curiosity about everything.

Instead, we spoon-feed them with whatever version of knowledge we subscribe to and our educational leaders feel threatened by alternative and different ways of looking at phenomena.

The product is many men and women in the street who trot out the same banal and simplistic reasoning for taking challenge and choice out of education and defining 'science' and 'fact' as one, completely missing the fact that much of science is still an imputation of meaning on a set of observed data which can change over time.

KWEN IP,

Sai Kung