I read a quote on Bartleby.com (great site for quotes) that got me thinking and thought I would pass it on. I have included the link to the quote page below, but will copy here for reference as well:
"The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion—these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness."
The quote is attributed to Jerome Bruner and appears in the The Process of Education published by Harvard in 1960.
Guessing and education quote from Bartleby.com
Guesses are powerful tools. Thoughtful guessing is a creative process. This is something I think had forgotten. In college, I studied a great deal of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics and formed hypotheses regarding all sorts of things, but have probably underutilized guessing over the past 13+ years.
After reading the quote, I plan to emphasize guessing, hypothesizing, estimating, etc. a great deal more as we homeschool our children. I'm not going to advocate guessing in place of preparation, but I will encourage it in the spirit of discovery and creative thinking.
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