Questions indicate learning

Margaret (in UE2) has a million questions.  Hunter answers many of her questions straight out, as I was saying in another post.  I was taught not to do this because it would close down a person's own inquiry, but this is not what happens; every answer she gets seems to multiply her questions, spur her to new flourishings of questions.  She's like some kind of plant that when you touch her a hundred blossoms spray out of that spot.  It's pretty fantastic.

The above was in response to Hunter having asked them to reflect on what they learned from the Energy Theater scenarios they watched yesterday, one of which was about sound.  Margaret was not sure whether they were supposed to write "what they learned," or "what it made them think about."  Hunter asked what the difference was, and Margaret said, "When I have learned something, I have no further questions about it.  You don't ask questions about things you know."  Elyse said, "But when you learn something you have an understanding, and from that understanding you ask more questions."  Ohhh, so beautiful.  Hunter said to become more aware of what you don't know is major intellectual progress, and that he did not hope for their questions to cease as they learned more and more; he hoped for them to exponentiate.  He remembers a hokey poster in his third grade English class that said something like, "The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shore of wonder."  Here is the first part of that:

Elyse added something about how once kids have a chance to experience something in a way that gives them ownership, they are able to ask more questions.  She seemed to be adding an identity/agency component to the proliferation of questions, which I think is right on.