Below is Part II of my conversation by email with Rohit:
In an ideal world where you were not sleep-deprived and they were not rushing to school and activities, what would you like to do with the “good” questions that they generated?
This is easy. I’d love to start looking stuff up with them and do experiments to follow up each question. I strongly think experiments with kids should be done quickly and organically in a relatively unstructured manner. Overall, I think the goals should be to lower the barriers to observing, asking questions, and trying experiments to figure out the answers. Once they ask a question we often ask how they might figure out the answer (without just looking it up). It usually ends there because the timing isn’t right or we don’t have the energy. But, occasionally we try an experiment together with whatever we have around the house. I think its important to just try something – anything really – to answer the question. Ideally, they should think up and execute the experiment mostly on their own, organically – without looking up an experiment somewhere. Then you can help them think through the results and potential problems with the experiment. If they are really into it, then you can refine the experiment and try again. I think it’s totally fine, and actually preferable, for experiments with kids to be flawed. Thinking through the results and why they are useful and not useful is really important to understanding the process. We talk about this in scientific process in a formal way but kids naturally get it and use it every time they play with blocks or sand or snow.
Do you see any connections between your attempts to get them to generate and stay with their questions and what you know they do at school?
Not really. I’d love to supplement and support what they are doing in school but its hard to really get a sense for what they are doing and thinking about. You know how it goes: “What did you do in school?”…”Nothing much, ate snack, played at recess.” I don’t know much about child cognitive development but they seem to: 1) go at their own pace in their own directions, and 2) exhibit extreme nonlinear learning. So you have to go with the questions as they come. This is unsettling since you don’t always know the answers but its fun to learn with them and show them that process too.
Any examples of a time when you have seen them stay with a question – even if it’s through continued conversation?
Yes, the story of Anisa’s questions about drops above would be a good one (see part I). Ajan’s penis question was outstanding in this regard too. He came up to me and used the word hypothesis incorrectly. I explained that you can use the word like you use the word guess. However, it’s a little different. We talked about how a hypothesis is usually a guess based on an observation about how something works. If possible, you should try to think about an experiment to test the hypothesis. I gave him an example of an elevator. Maybe there’s an elephant pulling it up. We could test this by opening one up and looking for an elephant.
A couple days later as we were brushing our teeth he said, “Oh dad, I have a hypothesis.” I was amused “Oh yeah, what is it?” He announced “My hypothesis is the penis has no bones.” I coughed and toothpaste came out of my nose which really stings. “How did you come up with that?” “Well, I OBSERVED (he said it very carefully) that after mom takes off my clothes for a shower I go running away and my penis flops all over the place, not like my arms and fingers which have bones.” I was really impressed: “That’s an amazing hypothesis.” But he wasn’t done. “But its also possible that it has lots of little tiny bones.” “Why could that be?” “Well, I also OBSERVED that it sometimes stands up by itself.” Here he simulated with his finger and said, “So maybe the bones are really tiny so they can flop around but they can also come together and make it stand up.” Then I was stunned: “Ajan, that’s one of the best hypotheses I’ve ever heard. You’re right, both would explain what you observed.” Frankly, I didn’t know how to reply and thankfully it was time to go to bed. A couple days later he came back and said, “Remember my hypothesis about the bones in the penis. Well, I saw in my alphabet book that X is for X-ray and they have a picture of an X-ray showing bones. So if we take an x-ray of a penis then we’ll know if there are none or if they are tiny.” As a dad and as a scientist, this was one of my prouder moments. I said it was a great idea and that we’ll have to look into it. I’ve had a hard time finding appropriate pictures of penis x-rays and I still need to follow up on this one.
About Rohit:
Rohit Sharma has been married to Charu Puri for 16 years and they have two hilarious and curious kids, 10-year-old Anisa and 7-year-old Ajan. He is currently an Instructor of Research at Mass General Hospital and lives in the Boston area. His training has included undergraduate work at MIT (BS Biology), MD/PhD (Biophysics) at University of Texas Southwestern, Internal Medicine residency at Boston Medical Center, and Clinical Genetics training in the Harvard Medical School Clinical Genetics Training Program. He and his family enjoy local family trips including hiking, skiing, and kayaking when they get the chance.