A good question is not concerned with a correct answer. A good question cannot be answered immediately. A good question challenges existing answers. A good question is one you badly want answered once you hear it, but had no inkling you cared before it was asked. A good question creates new territory of thinking.

We’re so used to the idea of being able to ask questions that we’ve forgotten what an amazing skill, or set of skills, it is. First, you have to know that you don’t know – to conceive of your own ignorance. Second, you have to be able to imagine different, competing possibilities; when a child asks whether ghosts are real or made-up, she is already