Especially with younger kids, when they are asked a question by someone with authority, there is a reasonable presumption that it can be answered. I'm all for teaching them to challenge that presumption, but I think you'd get a more fair result if the question was, "Can you figure out the age of the shepherd if you know how many dogs and sheep he has in his flock?"
Agreed. I think this is also an issue with the way we teach; we should teach students to have the confidence to deny the solvability or soundness of a problem on their own (rather than forcing irrational thought in order to arrive at a solution).
This is the equivalent of teaching a programmer to "shut up and code", even though they may have objections to the proposed solution.
Agreed - it would be interesting to run the numbers with "questions may not have an answer" as a qualifier. If I try to put myself back in my young student mindset, I would only expect to be correct with a non-answer response for a specific kind of test, or with a certain type of teacher that asked non-structured problems. If given this problem in a structured environment such as a standardized test I would likely look for a possible answer, realize none was possible, write a number as a guess with some notes about the median age of shepherds, and then be extremely frustrated at the test designer haha.
I get that this is supposed to outline the differences between structured / unstructured learning, thinking, and classroom conditioning, but it's not quite fair to draw a conclusion that doesn't take that conditioning into account.
Isn't that the whole point? We are teaching children badly by always giving them clear-cut problems that always have an answer, when the world is full of fuzzy problems that may not have an answer.
Given the environment, why wouldn't the children guess? For years, we give them homework and tests where a guess is always equal to or better than no answer at all. But that's nearly the opposite of how the world works, so we're clearly teaching them the wrong things. I don't see how revealing that is not "fair".
One of the most important things I learned in college was to say "I don't know". Many students (even college students), will dance around a question trying to get a hint of the answer. I have no problems saying that I don't know, followed by asking the teacher what was the answer/solution.
Teachers are much more assertive when you admit that you don't know, rather than being trying to prove your worth everytime.
Of course, this kind of maturity is hard for little kids, specially when the "differences in power" between the kid and the teacher are the biggest.
While I think this is true, I see the same thing in adults in professional positions (when given information and asked to respond to a query based on it, they will recombine the information and use it propose an answer even if where there is no sensible relationship between the question and the information rather than seeking additional information or identifying that the information offered is not sufficient to support a response to the question given) disturbingly often.
The "Education" system doesn't teach sheeple to be critical thinkers. It trains a subservient citizenry. You don't want your slaves to be critical thinkers, just trained enough. The student is disciplined and trained to guess based on incomplete information given to them. We have got to teach children to build upon first principles.
Poor kids, they are so afraid of being wrong! They would rather guess then take the time to figure out the fundamentals. They want to tell the teacher what he/she wants to hear regardless if it is a correct solution or not. I suppose that's what humans learn in a prison.
