On Questioning

For the next few months, the EMC program will be focusing on the development of questioning skills. This is rather important because most of the kids don’t possess these skills and, worse, believe that they don’t need them. Bott, Mrs. Gergen, and I, after a discussion about the real purpose of this program, concluded that this program is not so much about completing a successful research project as about the development of the students’ abilities to learn and think and create. And questioning is vital to that process. Therefore, we’ve decided that one of the main goals of this program is to give the students the questioning skills that they will need to succeed in their studies and in their careers and in their lives. To that end, we’ve been designing a plan for the month of November (and beyond) that should further foster these skills.

Of course, this focus has been low-key in the background of the program the entire time, mostly because questioning is essential for the development of all of the other aspects of this program (most especially the 5Cs). For example, all the way at the end of last year, at the first EMC meeting, we posed the question “Who was the best president?” and observed the kids struggle to recognize the ambiguity of the question. The activity was meant to highlight the skill of critical thinking, but the way to exercise critical thinking in that situation, and in most situations, was to ask some questions about the meaning of the words that we used. In order to answer the question posed, it was necessary to ask more questions. So, the questioning element has always been there, but I fear that it has been underemphasized and therefore flown under the radar of most of the students.

Now, students are not naturally accustomed to question. After 12 years in the public school system, where they’ve been asked to provide correct answers day in and day out for forever, they most likely look immediately for answers, rather than stop to question. Moreover, these particular students have been told for most of their lives that they are smart, that their answers are relatively more correct and correct more frequently. As a result, these kids, when presented with some research topic, immediately begin to formulate an answer to the unspoken (or perhaps imprecisely spoken) question that the topic poses, and then, once an answer has been formed, cling to a belief in its veracity, as it is the creation of an unimpeachable mind. Once they have an answer, and once they think it’s correct, it’s difficult for them to develop that ability to question themselves because they don’t believe that they need to. They believe that they already have the answer, already know what they’re going to do for their project, and therefore no further questioning need occur. This is what we’re going to try to change through this program. 

Easier said than done. Again, this isn’t just about showing kids how to question. It’s about getting them to care about questioning. And getting students to care has been a struggle for all educators everywhere and in all times.

To begin this process, we first had to determine why questions are important. It’s fairly easy to come up with some important uses of questions, but what was so important about these uses? I had to spend some time asking and answering my own set of questions. Why are questions important? Questions do something important. How do questions do this? Questions force us to seek knowledge and use it to form answers. Why do questions do this? Questions force us to stop and respond. It changes the path of our thinking. Why do questions do this? Questions orient us within the real world and remind us that there are views other than our own. 

Every answer is a proposition. Every proposition is a truth-claim. Every truth-claim is an argument. Therefore, every answer is an argument. These kids, like any researcher, are ultimately presenting an argument through their projects. “Art is important because…”; “Louis CK is funny because…”; Public education is failing students because…”; Dreams foster a sense of empathy because…” At the end of this project, these students don’t need to just present their findings, they have to defend them. And everything we do is designed to help them do this: finding credible sources, clearly outlining their limitations, encouraging clear thinking, using creativity to look at their information in a different way. But this purpose is never explicit. We never tell the kids that they’re in a fight over the truth of their conclusions. 

My argument for the benefit of writing has long been that we cannot completely trust our minds. As long as our thoughts remain ensconced in our brains, they are incomplete. While they are incomplete, we cannot truly understand them or their implications or their flaws. Therefore, we need to write, and thereby draw these thoughts out of our heads and expose them to the harsh light of the real world so that we can examine them in full there. Writing helps us think, and it helps us learn to think, and it helps us to realize the importance of good thinking. My argument for the benefit of questions is similar: we can’t completely trust our minds. Inside of our own heads, our thoughts, our beliefs, our arguments, seem to make sense. They feel so intuitive, since they are, after all, our own. We proceed from one proposition to another, creating long chains of complicated reasoning that seem oh so simple to us. We understand the truth; all that remains is to present our genius to the world. But this isn’t necessarily true. Things that make sense in our heads don’t always make sense in the real world. And this is because a) our logic is imperfect, and b) our knowledge is incomplete. Questions combat these flaws. Questioning is to argument what writing is to thinking. As we are all making arguments, we all require questioning.

Questions force us to stop in our own internal chain of reasoning and respond to some outside thought. Even if we’re coming up with our own questions, we do so from a slightly different perspective than the thought that we’re questioning, usually in response to a recognition of flawed logic or lack of knowledge. But this recognition, and the accompanying questions, come from a consideration of the real world. You believe that your theory of the way the world works is complete and perfect, until you are confronted with phenomena which you cannot explain with your current theory, and then the “doubts,” which are really questions, filter in. Questions are generated by the exposure of your arguments to the outside world. Questions from outside of ourselves are necessarily questions from the outside world. They reveal flaws in our argument that, in the warmth of our own minds, we would never have seen on our own. 

Questions are beneficial, then, because they force us to step outside of ourselves and seek more knowledge, or revise our existing theory, in order to come up with a better answer than the one we’ve been telling ourselves. It makes our argument better. But, more than that, it reminds us that we are, in fact, arguing. There is an outside world, and for our theory to mean anything, it must have applicability in that outside world. Our answers aren’t just for us, they’re for the world and for life and for our lives in the world. They must, therefore, be tested against the world, and be revised if necessary. And finally, they remind us that our propositions are, indeed, arguments, by showing us that there are other views, other answers, out there in the real world, and that we must not only present our own theory, but overcome the theories of others. Unless, of course, we’re wrong, and in seeking to overcome the theories of others we come to learn the truth of our own and the truth of the matter, which is its own benefit. 

Questions force us to confront ourselves, and to confront the world. They remind us that our truth claims are answers to questions, spoken or unspoken, about the world, and that the standard for their validity is external to ourselves. And by doing this, they make our truth claims so much stronger. And this truth claiming is not limited to this research project. Or to school. Or to our professional lives. Everything we say, everything we do, is a claim that what we’re saying or doing is right. Experience will teach us whether we were right. Questions will teach us how to be right.

I’m rather excited by the increased focus on questioning skills, because they are what sets apart sharp kids from mature intellectuals, and this program is more about development of skills than about opportunities for learning. Moreover, this new focus will provide us with greater purpose and mindfulness as we go about continuing to shape and design this class. We want these kids to be the best they can be; questioning skills are vital to achieving that improvement. We must, therefore, commit to developing those skills, although not to the exclusion of all else, and we must make the development of these skills matter to the kids, as well.