Easy questions have right answers. Hard questions have better answers, but not necessarily one right answer.
In that context, educators need to make sure we aren’t making a false equivalency by always rewarding the quickest answers. Quick answers are great in multiplication problems, but for anything of lasting impact, the quickest answer might be bested by an answer that takes more time an nuance to develop. If a person learns throughout school that the fastest answer gets the prize, then they learn to avoid the slower, more complex thinking that comes when you’re not trying to be first.
Put another way, the opinions voiced in a meeting aren’t always the best ones. They’re the fastest ones, but the best ones might come an hour, a day, a week later, as the patient thinker delves more deeply into the ideas surrounding a question.
Teach your students to think, and to not accept their first answer as the best one. (Try, as I tell my own kids, to be a “slow thinker.”)