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| Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash |
“Seeing the world again through a child’s eyes is full of paradoxical moments of “painful joy.” I wanted this short film to capture that feeling.” -Kelly O’brien, film creature/producer of How does Life Live? From the New York Times, Opinion
In the short and provocative film, O’brien, creating a short documentary film based on her children’s questions, prompts her young children to repeat questions that they have asked over the years. I am sure that among the thousands of questions her children have asked, many of them are mundane, inconsequential. But not these questions.
They reflect the random thoughts we all have about why things are the way they are (‘Why do trees just stand there?), about how the world works (What does extinct mean?), and about what makes us human (‘Why do you like beautiful things so much?)
These children ask the toughest questions: the ones we don’t have easy answers to.
What is kind?
Why do we eat animals?
They ask questions we can’t google.
Why are some things special?
Why doesn’t everybody know me?
They ask questions that the next generation will have to answer and point out problems they may have the power in future to solve:
They ask questions that the next generation will have to answer and point out problems they may have the power in future to solve:
Why is the world so messy?
What is power?
Why are we going to die?
They ask the questions that we busy adults sometimes forget are the most important:
What is fragile?
Why are we human?
Of course young children are concerned with the mundane, but more often than not, they are grappling with their developing understandings and constructing theories about how the world works.
As an educator of young children, and as a mother to young children, I need to remember these things when I am overburdened with the (seemingly) mundane:
Why do I have to eat my dinner?
Why do I have to go to school?
Why do I have to go to bed?
I often struggle to answer these questions, as my interpretation of the question often doesn’t seem to satisfy.
“Because you need food to grow.”
“Because you need to learn.”
“Because you need sleep to grow.”
My not-quite-getting-to-the-point answers are usually met with a blank stare and one-upped with, “yeah, but why?”
There is a steady stream of quotes on the importance of valuing questions over answers on my Twitter Feed...but as a teacher, and particularly as a parent, I am constantly asking myself, how does one answer such questions?
Hi Holly
ReplyDeleteThis is a lovely post as it is so real - just real life and how we interact with the things around us. I particularly love this "Of course young children are concerned with the mundane, but more often than not, they are grappling with their developing understandings and constructing theories about how the world works" as it is important to realise that the mundane to us can be the exciting - I guess it just depends on your lens. I love the way you have broken the questions into the different categories - it made me consider how I would categories the questions I ask and are asked of me. In answer to the last question I would pose another question - does one need to answer the questions? Can questions just be questions?