Why we should go back to school once in a while
Aug 25, 2026, 01.53 PM IST
Tied to the newsroom, I often turn down invitations to events. Mornings are too early, evenings are peak newspaper production time. But when it comes to interactions with young people, especially students, I try to make time. I find campus visits not just nostalgic but reinvigorating too. Gen Z never ceases to amuse and amaze me, but last week was something new: an hour with Gen Alpha at an international school in Chennai.
A teacher briefed me on the topic of discussion with her fourth-grade students: The making of a newspaper and its social impact. I told the kids they could raise their hands anytime during my talk. I hadn’t started, and some 20 hands went up. How do you make a newspaper? Ah, I thought, explaining that is a child’s play. But when the ‘how’ flipped to ‘why’, it questioned the very purpose of my job: Why do you make a newspaper? I realized interacting with adults – young and old – is easier than facing a firing squad of tiny tots.
The questions kept coming. How do you decide what is news? Why do some stories get more space than others? Can a newspaper make people change their minds? Who decides what is true? Does an editor overrule when there is a difference of opinion? What happens if a newspaper makes a mistake?
They were questions about power, responsibility, truth and the way society works. And they came from nine-year-olds who had no professional vocabulary for any of these concepts, but possessed something more valuable: an instinct to question.
Children have an extraordinary capacity to notice things adults have learned to overlook. Their minds have not yet accumulated all the assumptions that make the rest of us stop asking questions. A child sees a contradiction and wants it explained. An adult sees the same contradiction and often files it away under “that’s how things are”.
A child’s brain is constantly building and strengthening connections through observation, experience, conversation and play. Curiosity is not a distraction from learning; it is one of the engines of learning. When children ask “why?”, they are not merely seeking an answer; they are trying to construct a mental model of the world.
And sometimes their questions expose the gaps in ours.
In an earlier interaction with students, a girl asked me whether a newspaper should publish something if it is true but could hurt someone. It was a remarkably grown-up question. I gave her an answer about public interest, fairness and responsibility. But walking back to the newsroom, I found myself thinking about the question again. How often do adults make decisions because we have a clear principle, and how often because we have become accustomed to a particular way of doing things?
That is the gift of an observant mind. When adults look, children notice. When we hear, they listen for what is missing. And the final question is always “why?” The challenge for parents, teachers and society is to ensure that this instinct survives childhood.
We often praise children for asking questions until their questions become inconvenient. Then we tell them not to interrupt, not to argue, not to overthink. We reward the “right” answer more readily than the “uncomfortable” question.
Of course, children need boundaries, discipline and knowledge. Curiosity without direction can become chaos. But knowledge without curiosity can become a collection of facts with little understanding. The answer is not to turn every child into a prodigy. It is to give every child the freedom to wonder.
I went to the school thinking I would teach nine-year-olds how a newspaper is made. I came back reminded that the more important task is to keep asking why we make one.
A teacher briefed me on the topic of discussion with her fourth-grade students: The making of a newspaper and its social impact. I told the kids they could raise their hands anytime during my talk. I hadn’t started, and some 20 hands went up. How do you make a newspaper? Ah, I thought, explaining that is a child’s play. But when the ‘how’ flipped to ‘why’, it questioned the very purpose of my job: Why do you make a newspaper? I realized interacting with adults – young and old – is easier than facing a firing squad of tiny tots.
The questions kept coming. How do you decide what is news? Why do some stories get more space than others? Can a newspaper make people change their minds? Who decides what is true? Does an editor overrule when there is a difference of opinion? What happens if a newspaper makes a mistake?
They were questions about power, responsibility, truth and the way society works. And they came from nine-year-olds who had no professional vocabulary for any of these concepts, but possessed something more valuable: an instinct to question.
Children have an extraordinary capacity to notice things adults have learned to overlook. Their minds have not yet accumulated all the assumptions that make the rest of us stop asking questions. A child sees a contradiction and wants it explained. An adult sees the same contradiction and often files it away under “that’s how things are”.
A child’s brain is constantly building and strengthening connections through observation, experience, conversation and play. Curiosity is not a distraction from learning; it is one of the engines of learning. When children ask “why?”, they are not merely seeking an answer; they are trying to construct a mental model of the world.
And sometimes their questions expose the gaps in ours.
In an earlier interaction with students, a girl asked me whether a newspaper should publish something if it is true but could hurt someone. It was a remarkably grown-up question. I gave her an answer about public interest, fairness and responsibility. But walking back to the newsroom, I found myself thinking about the question again. How often do adults make decisions because we have a clear principle, and how often because we have become accustomed to a particular way of doing things?
That is the gift of an observant mind. When adults look, children notice. When we hear, they listen for what is missing. And the final question is always “why?” The challenge for parents, teachers and society is to ensure that this instinct survives childhood.
We often praise children for asking questions until their questions become inconvenient. Then we tell them not to interrupt, not to argue, not to overthink. We reward the “right” answer more readily than the “uncomfortable” question.
Of course, children need boundaries, discipline and knowledge. Curiosity without direction can become chaos. But knowledge without curiosity can become a collection of facts with little understanding. The answer is not to turn every child into a prodigy. It is to give every child the freedom to wonder.
I went to the school thinking I would teach nine-year-olds how a newspaper is made. I came back reminded that the more important task is to keep asking why we make one.