Has anyone ever called you ignorant?
I’m betting you bristled at the very sound of the word – a word that’s usually wielded as a weapon and often starts an argument (especially with strangers on the internet).
Ignorance gets a bad rap, because most of us assume there’s only one kind. But I have a theory: there are three kinds of ignorance, and one of them is worth cultivating.
We’ll get to that one, but first, let’s talk about…
Neutral Ignorance
Neutral ignorance is very similar to innocence. It’s gentle, non-combative, and often temporary. This is the ignorance that Merriam Webster defines as:
lack of knowledge, education, or awareness
and there’s absolutely no shame in it. I mean, look at small children: they’re full up of neutral ignorance, and they usually grow out of it.
But for those of us without access to the education or life experiences that transform neutral ignorance into knowledge? There’s no shame in that, either. No one can know everything, a fact I’m forced to reckon with every time I walk into a library!
Deliberate Ignorance
Deliberate ignorance is something else entirely… something far more destructive.
This is the kind of ignorance that persists in spite of access to knowledge. People displaying deliberate ignorance:
- accept information that supports their beliefs without applying critical thinking, healthy skepticism, or asking to see the evidence
- refuse to engage with or even acknowledge contradictory information
- reject information that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable
- refuse to admit they might be wrong.
Deliberate ignorance afflicts people of all ages, backgrounds, and political preferences. When faced with overwhelming evidence they are wrong, deliberate ignorance causes people to shrug and say, “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
No wonder ignorance gets a bad rap!
Constructive Ignorance
Fortunately, there’s one more kind of ignorance – the very best kind, the kind we could all use a little bit more of. It’s the kind I like to call “Constructive Ignorance.” In his book Ignorance: How it Drives Science, Stuart Firestein describes constructive ignorance as:
…a particular condition of knowledge: the absence of fact, understanding, insight, or clarity about something. It is not an individual lack of information but a communal gap in knowledge, where the existing data don’t make sense, don’t add up to a coherent explanation, cannot be used to make a prediction or statement about some thing or event. This is knowledgable ignorance, perceptive ignorance, insightful ignorance. It leads us to frame better questions, the first step to getting better answers.
Constructive ignorance is defined by curiosity and expressed through questions:
“Why do wolves howl?”
“How do bumblebees fly?”
“What is matter actually made of?”
“Why do kids look like their parents?”
“Is there life on other planets?”
These days, many of us turn to google for answers to our questions, or (please, no) AI. Scientists do something a little different. They ask questions that no one knows the answers to (especially not AI). Then they put on their trusty lab coats and go find out.
After all, that’s what science is – a set of tools for producing knowledge about life, the universe, and everything that we never had before. By engaging with constructive ignorance, science discovers solutions and solves mysteries and shines light into the darkest depths of what’s unknown.
It also reveals how much more there is to learn! That’s right: science produces knowledge, but it also produces more ignorance. There are always more questions worth asking. In other words, constructive ignorance is not a limit, it’s an opportunity.
And that’s why it’s so much fun.
How Children’s Books Cultivate Curiosity
What does any of this have to do with my work as a children’s author? It’s simple. Children’s nonfiction operates at the intersection of neutral and constructive ignorance.
By definition, kids are young. They haven’t had much life experience or education yet, so they’re chock full of neutral ignorance. They’re also chock full of natural curiosity and brimming over with questions – questions they often answer by reading a book. As I explained in a previous post, kids LOVE nonfiction, and they’ll often choose books that are “too hard” for their reading level if they’re interested in banishing their ignorance on the topic.
But reading nonfiction also inspires new questions, especially when a book admits there are things we still don’t know. And especially when books portray science as a curiosity-driven process, not a static collection of facts. By teaching readers to think like scientists, nonfiction cultivates curiosity, skepticism, wonder, and you guessed it, constructive ignorance. Books invite readers to participate in the process of discovery… perhaps inspiring them to pursue their curiosity all the way to a career in science.
As Firestein puts it:
We must teach students how to think in questions, how to manage ignorance. W. B. Yeats admonished that “education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Indeed. Time to get out of the matches.
Children’s books can be those matches. That’s one reason I love writing them (well, that and the opportunity to engage with my own ignorance!). Author visits are also trusty fire-starters – especially if the author writes about science. For more on that topic, read Six Reasons Science Writers Should Be in Schools, and then contact me to learn more about my STEM programs – I’d love to help your class cultivate their constructive ignorance!
