Oh, come on

The idea of doing the dividing mentally rather than with white rods did not stick in the minds of these children because it was my idea, not theirs; there was no place for it in their minds; it did not meet any felt intellectual need. We must not fool ourselves, as for years I fooled myself, into thinking that guiding children to answers by carefully chosen leading questions is in any important respect different from just telling them the answers in the first place. Children who have been led up to answers by teachers’ questions are later helpless unless they can remember the questions, or ask themselves similar questions, and this is exactly what they cannot do. The only answer that really sticks in a child’s mind is the answer to a question that he asked or might ask of himself.