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Good learners, in other words, prefer to rely on their own judgment. They recognize, especially as they get older, that an incredible number of people do not know what they are talking about most of the time. As a consequence, they are suspicious of “authorities,” especially any authority who discourages others from relying on their own judgment. Good learners are usually not fearful of being wrong. They recognize their limitations and suffer no trauma in concluding that what they believe is apparently not so. In other words, they can change their minds. Changing the character of their minds is what good learners are most interested in doing. Good learners are emphatically not fast answerers. They tend to delay their judgments until they have access to as much information as they imagine will be available. Good learners are flexible. While they almost always have a point of view about a situation, they are capable of shifting to other perspectives to see what they can find. Another way of saying this is that good learners seem to understand that “answers” are relative, that everything depends on the system within which you are working. What is “true” in one system may not be “true” in another. That is why, when asked a question, good learners frequently begin their answers with the words “It depends.”

Hemingway replied, “Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.” It seems to us that, in his response, Hemingway identified an essential survival strategy and the essential function of the schools in today’s world. One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of “crap.” Our intellectual history is a chronicle of the anguish and suffering of men who tried to help their contemporaries see that some part of their fondest beliefs were misconceptions, faulty assumptions, superstitions, and even outright lies.

A literal translation of “John is stupid” (that is, its most scientific meaning) might go something like this: “When I perceive John’s behavior, I am disappointed or distressed or frustrated or disgusted. The sentence I use to express my perceptions and evaluation of these events is ‘John is stupid.’ ” When we say, “John is stupid,” we are talking about ourselves much more than we are talking about John. And yet, this fact is not reflected at all in the statement. The I—the involvement of the perceiver—has been removed by a grammatical peculiarity. Our grammar has forced us to “objectify” our feelings, to project them onto something outside of our skins. “Stupidity” is a grammatical category. It does not exist in “nature.” Yet we imagine that it does because our language has put it there.

[...]it seems clear from the Ames studies that what we perceive is largely a function of our previous experiences, our assumptions, and our purposes (i.e., needs). [...] You tend to perceive what you want and need to perceive, and what your past experience has led you to assume will “work” for you. Third, we are unlikely to alter our perceptions until and unless we are frustrated in our attempts to do something based on them. If our actions seem to permit us to fulfill our purposes, we will not change our perceptions no matter how often we are told that they are “wrong.”[...] This does not mean, however, that we automatically change our perceptions if we are frustrated in our attempts to act on them. This does mean that we have available the alternative of changing our perceptions.

Once you have learned how to ask questions—relevant and appropriate and substantial questions—you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. Let us remind you, for a moment, of the process that characterizes school environments: what students are restricted to (solely and even vengefully) is the process of memorizing (partially and temporarily) somebody else’s answers to somebody else’s questions. It is staggering to consider the implications of this fact. The most important intellectual ability man has yet developed—the art and science of asking questions—is not taught in school! Moreover, it is not “taught” in the most devastating way possible: by arranging the environment so that significant question asking is not valued.