Block Head & The Virtues of Not Knowing

After our box theatre experiment in class, all I could think about was my reactions to what happened that day. I remember as I was assembling the boxes, questioning exactly why we had to do everything so precisely. I understood blocking out all of the light, but the part where the hole was poked I was curious about. We had to cut a square out of the box, cover it with the aluminum tape (best at blocking out lots of light), and then poke a hole. Why couldn't we just poke a hole straight in the box? Maybe this is me over thinking, but that simple procedure is what I have based my whole thought process on the box theatre upon. The important part was that I was thinking.
Before the experiment I had a pretty basic idea of what I thought would happen. I thought I'd just see a shadow of my head--- big whoop. What really happened totally shocked me. I actually thought that it was a trick! My mind was obviously blown and my inability to explain it irritated me. I spent the rest of the class pondering... but it didn't stop there. I thought I had an idea and talked myself in and out of several solutions- much like the students in the examples in the Eleanor Duckworth reading. The student who was observing the water volume experiment had a very similar reaction to mine when I stuck that box on my head and saw what I saw. We both had an idea... and then had to edit it. We talked ourselves in and out of it, talked in circles, and then finally started to settle.
I thought the article really brought in to perspective a lot of the faults in the way we teach today. I teach a high school drumline and just from being around them and observing I realized how terrified they are of being wrong. They want so desperately to have the last word and to be correct but in reality that is so irrational. Since then I have tried my hardest to teach them that it is TOTALLY OK to ask questions, to not understand, to talk about things, to figure things out... Very rarely will they get things right the first time, but that isn't what our education methods are teaching them. Dr. Seuss has a book called "Hooray for Diffendoofer Day" and my favorite line in the book is when the teacher, Ms. Bonkers tells the students "We've taught you that the earth is round, that red and white make pink, and something else that matters more- we've taught you how to think." That is the kind of teaching I want to do.