Wonder-Based Questioning - Part 2
Our articles often contain unconventional ideas inspired by the young people and amazing educators we have met. These are not intended to offend, but rather to spark curiosity and inspire contemplation. We do not claim these views as truths, merely one point of view. If these ideas challenge or offend you, we invite you to engage with them critically and share your thoughts with us.
Welcome back to the Wonder-Based Questioning Series, where we explore inquiry-driven education by empowering students with our Wonder Question Technique (WQT).
If you missed it, read Part 1 here!
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination… Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein
We’re Born to be Geniuses
The tragedy of modern education is that it often strips away what makes kids brilliant.
A famous NASA study tested children’s creativity over time, finding that 98% of five-year-olds scored at “genius” levels for divergent thinking. By age 15, that number plummeted to 12%. By adulthood, it was just 2%.
Coincidentally, this decline aligns with the drop in questioning that Warren Berger describes in A More Beautiful Question. As we drill kids with tests and predetermined answers, we “work the genius out of them.”
We’ve replaced “What if” questions — like Einstein wondering, “What if I could ride a beam of light?” — with “What’s the right answer?” questions.
This loss of the creative spark of genius in us isn’t just academic.
It’s existential.
Ask a 15-year-old what they want to do with their life today, and most will shrug, “I don’t know.” That’s not a lack of ambition; it’s a lack of autonomy, which develops our competence. We’ve spent years telling kids what to learn instead of letting them explore who they are.
We’ve dulled their natural, inborn spark of wonder.
Fluid Intelligence
Kids today don’t need to be repositories of facts; they need to be explorers of ideas.
Young people move with what Richard Feynman called “fluid intelligence,” experimenting where adults often stagnate. Fluid intelligence is the capacity to adapt, solve novel problems, and think creatively.
Feynman was known as the Great Explainer. He believed true understanding comes from the ability to teach complex ideas simply, ideally to a child. It was about ditching the jargon and confusing terminology for clarity and mastery of the concepts.
Einstein echoes this sentiment: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.”
More than that, it wasn’t just about repeating back answers or knowledge but rather about playing with ideas and elevating one’s understanding of core concepts by engaging listeners as participants, not sounding boards.
What’s known as emotional intelligence.
As Warren Berger notes in A More Beautiful Question, this instinct to question erodes as we age. The education system appears to grow impatient with the relentless “why?” questions and dismisses them as childish rather than fostering engagement with these questions as a gateway to mutual discovery.
What matters is the ability to bring individuals together to collaborate and adapt, skills learned through questioning and tinkering with ideas, not cramming in answers.
Unlike traditional classes that demand right-or-wrong answers, inquiry-driven and wonder-based education lets kids wrestle with open-ended challenges that mirror the real world. It empowers them to chase their interests and solve authentic problems while adults learn alongside them.
Wonder
What is it?
Where does it come from?
Just like the other great mysteries of our reality — from consciousness to energy — wonder isn’t something tangible or definable. We can’t point to wonder as a “thing,” but we know at the core of our collective consciousness that it exists nonetheless.
We’re all born with the ability to experience a state of wonder. It is woven into the fabric of our being and soul. You can’t escape it. It is part of the cosmos.
It is that sense of awe, of the sublime, of the sacred.
It causes astonishment and admiration.
It sucks you in with rapt attention and awesome mystery.
Wonder is that electric jolt that lights up a kid’s eyes when they see a firefly flicker for the first time or ask, “Why does the moon follow us?” It’s when they dismantle a toy, not just to break something, but to see how it works.
Wonder is a full-body, mind-bending awe that makes the world feel alive with possibilities. It is a state of mind that enchants our emotions without abandoning reason, letting us see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Wonder is the raw, unfiltered fuel of imagination that drives us to question, explore, and create. It bridges the known and the unknown, sparking everything from scientific breakthroughs to jaw-dropping art.
Think of Einstein, staring at the stars, wondering what it’d be like to hitch a ride on a light beam. That’s wonder at work, taking something familiar, like light or gravity, and flipping it into a question that rewrites the universe.
No other being on the planet experiences wonder like humans, and we can stay in this state of wonder for the rest of our lives.
Often, however, we let the spark of our wonder dim as we grow up, trading awe for answers, mystery for monotony. We suppress it in the youth and tell them to abandon wonder. We see their acts of play (which are fueled by wonder) as a waste of time.
The same system that drills kids to memorize facts can squash their instinct to marvel, leaving them (and us) stuck in a world that feels flat and predictable.
Wonder, though, is stubborn.
You can shelf your wonder and push it into the deepest, darkest depths of your being, but that spark will always be inside you. Wonder is a state of experience that is always accessible if you know how to reach it.
It’s why, even as adults, we get goosebumps watching a sunset or feel a tug when a kid asks, “What makes the wind?” It’s a reminder that the world is still brimming with questions we haven’t answered and connections we haven’t made.
Wonder is a way to balance life’s highs and lows, keeping us anchored in enchantment without escaping reality.
The trick is to learn how to ride our Wonder Beams into infinity.
We all have our own Wonder Beams, just like we have our own unique perspectives.
It is another one of these common human threads we all share. We are all born with H.O.P.E. (Hold On, Possibilities Exist) inside us that we can give to other people.
We all have Sweethearts in our lives — people who give us H.O.P.E.
We all need meaning (purpose or significance) and human acceptance (belonging).
And we’re all born into this world with wonder.
It is something we can all share and tap into.
When we nurture wonder, we’re not just teaching kids to ask better questions; we’re showing them how to stay open to the world’s magic, to see every moment as a chance to discover something new.
When we let wonder lead, it doesn’t just inspire genius; it makes us feel alive.
This is why wonder-based questioning matters.
It’s about helping our children (and reminding ourselves) to approach life with eyes wide open, to let awe guide their questions, and to find joy in the search itself. When we protect that spark, we’re not just saving their creativity, we’re saving our own.
Inquiry-Based Learning
In the world of academia, this “wonder” learning process is called inquiry-based learning. Inquiry-based and project-based learning aren’t just buzzwords — they’re how kids naturally engage with the world. The research shows that students who pursue this type of education outperform those who use traditional methods.
A 2008 Stanford review of 20 years of research found that students learn more deeply when applying classroom knowledge to real-world problems, with inquiry-based learning outperforming all other factors, including background and prior achievement.
A 2016 meta-analysis of 72 studies by Lazonder and Harmsen showed that teacher-supported inquiry-based instruction consistently led to better student outcomes than other teaching methods.
A 1996 study found that inquiry-based, authentic practices not only improved learning across all grade levels but also helped close the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students.
A June 2017 study showed that students in an inquiry-based learning group made significantly greater gains in social studies performance than their peers.
A July 2010 study found that students using problem-based learning showed stronger problem-solving skills and performed better on standardized tests.
A 2019 study revealed that students in classrooms using inquiry-based instruction at least four days a week experienced significantly greater academic growth than those in traditional settings.
We see this research as more than data points; it’s a blueprint for reviving the natural curiosity and wonder that defines childhood and bridging it to the wisdom and expensive experiences adults can provide. (Expensive experience is lived trial and error. Inexpensive experience is gained from another’s expensive experience, so we don’t need to work through the same challenges.)
Research from democratic schools shows that these students emerge self-directed and resilient, ready for a world that values adaptability over compliance. Take the Sudbury School model, where students choose their pursuits without grades or mandatory classes. Students choose what to learn, guided by their interests and supported by a community of peers and adults.
Children are born researchers.
Educators must evolve from delivering content to fostering curiosity and wonder.
They are no longer the gatekeepers of facts — they’re shepherds of exploration. We must help our students navigate these unpredictable times and reclaim the human skills needed for life.
Studies show that curious students, like those tracked in an Australian report, significantly outperform peers in subjects like mathematics, driven by an intrinsic desire to explore rather than memorize.
The evidence is clear: curiosity, wonder, and inquiry-based learning transform education from a passive transfer of facts into an active pursuit of understanding. We must encourage them to ask questions and play with ideas. Students who craft their own questions score higher on tests than those who merely restudy material.
Even if in the real world, tests don’t really matter.
Where We’re At
At this juncture, we’ve established that rethinking education is critical to helping young people discover their strengths, passions, and purpose. In a world where the truth is buried in forgeries and falsities, we need questioners — people who will challenge everything, not to defy but to understand.
Our goal is to empower students to lead their own learning and thrive in a world where information is at their fingertips, and the research backs this.
But this shift requires a new mindset.
We must stop bootstrapping kids’ genius with traditional backpacks of education. We don’t need to teach the plethora of content we think they should know anymore.
Instead, we must empower them to discover their strengths and trust them to make choices. We must allow them the autonomy to pursue their passions, just as they have in age-mixed playgroups for thousands of years.
This approach fosters critical thinking and competence. They’re not weighed down by irrelevant content but lifted by the freedom to explore.
If students love calculus, let them dive deep, unburdened by subjects they’ll never use. Others might shine in storytelling, science, design, or writing. We want to nurture curiosity to help unleash each child’s unique passions and purpose, then allow them to pursue them unfettered.
Otherwise, who knows how many Einsteins or Kepplers, individuals who became some of the greatest thinkers in history by following their passions, we are suppressing. This is why we want to bring back wonder-based learning.
Asking good questions is a skill that fuels curiosity and gives education its pulse. Rather than feeding students answers to repeat back, what if we empower them to generate and refine their own questions?
If we let kids lead with wonder, they don’t just learn — they thrive.
And there’s a simple process ANYONE can use.
We call it the Wonder Question Technique.
Brace yourself as we begin a journey to rebuilding empathy and overcoming anxiety.