Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are for students. Questions are for thinkers.
Roger SchankRead
Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans prefer comprehending information through narratives rather than abstract reasoning.
This quote emphasizes the idea that storytelling is a natural way for humans to make sense of the world. It suggests that while logic is important, our brains are wired to respond better to stories, which engage our emotions and imagination, making them powerful tools for teaching and communication.
Themes
StorytellingUnderstandingNarrativeEducationLogicCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
A teacher might use this quote to highlight the importance of storytelling in lessons.
More from Roger Schank
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We read to find out what the world is like, to experience lots of lives, not just the one we live. If it is true that our lives are chaotic and we crave a shape, stories are the shapes that we put on experience, containing all the wisdom in the world. We can even choose what kind of wisdom suits us.
Ramona KovalRead
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen KellerRead
Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.
John DeweyRead
As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.
A. S. ByattRead
The biggest thing we get out of it is seeing the kids smile. And hopefully we will also see that the lessons we're teaching - not only the fundamentals of hockey, but also the life values - are sinking in.
Bobby OrrRead
By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.
Alan KayRead