[aDyslecticCrow]

> Asking the right kind of questions is a genuine skill.

A skill we cannot rely kids to have, and which i think takes years of training and learning for even adults to really acquire. (to be clear, i'm not thinking about AI prompting. I 'm thinking about assumption breaking and understanding prodding questions the learner asks themselves and seeks answers for, to build and refine their mental models of something they learn)

[lacy_tinpot]

That's absolutely not true. Kids get trained how to ask questions very quickly from a very young age. Good responses to those questions fundamentally shape the entire developmental journey for kids and extends to their academic abilities in school.

Because questions are fundamentally about knowledge differentials, which will always exist for individual human beings. We can't at any point know everything.

Know how to know what you don't know and get a good grasp of what it means to know in the first place.

Knowledge isn't absolute.

[aDyslecticCrow]

A great answer can compensate for a bad question.

A great question can compensate for a simple answer.

Kids can ask questions, but they rely on an experienced teacher to effectively answer.

Teaching someone effectively through answering questions, require the teacher through the students questions to build a model of the students model. To answer not only the question directly, but also the question that should have been asked instead.

A good end-of-chapter quiz doesn't check that a reader read the next. It asks questions whos answer rule out possible (or common) incorrect mental models the reader may have built.

A learner skilled in asking truly excellent questions, makes questions for which even a bad or simple answer rule out and refine their assumptions.

And that is a skill i doubt is ever truly mastered.

Its like the X Y. A great teacher answers X instead of Y. A great learner asks about X in the firstplace.