Monday, February 25, 2008

The answers are in the questions

If you have ever tried to communicate adult concepts to young children, you would understand a little of the frustrations a mediator goes through. Try explaining the concept of "credit", "democracy", "shares" and a thousand other things we adults take for granted, and you'll be amazed at how difficult the explanation process can be.
There is however a simpler way to explain the concepts to the child, and that is by asking the child specific, and guided questions. By asking open questions to draw on what the child already knows, and seeking to link the child's background knowledge and information to the abstract concepts we hope to communicate, we sometimes see the child quickly grasp the very adult concepts. In fact, the child can end up teaching us a new perspective we have yet to see.
Would the answers be wrong a lot of times? Definitely, from our perspective, but that's not the point. The important thing is the process. The art of continually questioning in order to help the child clarify more and more of his/her understanding. Eventually, the child "gets it", and at that point in time, so do we.
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