I Don't Know
The Three Most Undervalued Words in Education
Seventy-three seconds.
That’s how long the space shuttle Challenger lasted before it exploded after liftoff on January 28, 1986, a tragedy witnessed by millions.
What many don’t know is that the disaster might have been prevented if someone had listened to a single voice of uncertainty.
That voice belonged to Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. The weeks and days leading up to the launch, he reviewed data that raised serious concerns: the O-ring seals could fail in the unusually cold Florida temperatures forecast for the morning.
Boisjoly didn’t have ironclad proof. He didn’t have certainty. What he had was caution. A concern. A willingness to say “We don’t know enough to go forward.”
He begged for the launch to be delayed. His recommendation was overruled.
We often remember Challenger as a technological failure. In reality, it was a failure of humility, a system unwilling to pause, to listen to doubt, to say “Let’s rethink this.”
Fast forward to today, and we see a different kind of rocketship in education: artificial intelligence. It’s fast. Impressive. Seemingly all-knowing.
And once again, we're moving forward at high speed, often without stopping to ask whether students are learning to think for themselves… or just learning to perform well enough to pass.
But in a world that’s changing as fast as ours, being right isn't the highest form of intelligence.
Being able to rethink is.
In his book Think Again, psychologist Adam Grant makes a compelling case for the power of intellectual humility, the ability to recognize the limits of our knowledge and stay curious.
“Being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking.” He explains that intelligence often reinforces confidence, not humility, and that smarter people are often more susceptible to bias, not less.
We’ve spent the past century teaching students how to be right. Maybe it’s time we teach them how to revise. Reflect. Rethink.
Imagine a classroom that doesn’t just reward accuracy, but celebrates adaptability:
A student says, “I used to think X, but now I’m not so sure…”
Another changes their mind after a peer discussion and explains why.
A third gets something wrong, but revises their work with stronger reasoning.
These are the kinds of learners who will thrive in uncertainty. Not because they memorize the most, but because they’re wired to keep asking better questions.
Certainty is efficient. But humility is resilient.
If the Challenger disaster reminds us of anything, it’s that unchecked confidence can be dangerous. When we silence or ignore the quiet voice of uncertainty, we risk more than just wrong answers, we risk critical failures in judgment, creativity, and character.
So maybe the most important thing we can teach our students is how to say:
“I don’t know… yet.”
And mean it as a starting point, not an apology.
I’m curious:
When’s the last time a student changed your mind?
Or when you changed theirs, not because you had the answer, but because you created space for a better question?