9:39pm June 24, 2014

“I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. Why is the Moon round? the children ask. Why is grass green? What is a dream? How deep can you dig a hole? When is the world’s birthday? Why do we have toes? Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else: ‘What did you expect the Moon to be, square?’ Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before 6-year-olds, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that we don’t know something? Is our self-esteem so fragile?”

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (via thedragoninmygarage)

What is so unbelievably sad about this is how amazing and wonderful it is when you and a child both don’t know something, so you seek out the answers together. Either finding books in a library or elsewhere or looking it up on the net and talking about the info.

The joy of discovery and learning is so much more intense when you can see someone who’s so new to the world experiencing it along with you. And so many adults are not only shut down to learning new things, forever trapped in stagnation and ignorance, they damage that joy in children, a horrid sin if there ever was one.

(via ladygolem)

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