Week 10: Loving the Questions

Right away I felt much more connected to this chapter than the last.  Perhaps I was just feeling more open minded, but this time, the author articulated many of my own thoughts and theories throughout the chapter and offered some better, more practical (I think) exercises on how to introduce inquiry based learning in the classroom.  In the first few pages, Uhl talks about our negative associations with questions - the fear, anxiety, and even humiliation that the idea of questioning can evoke.  These are feelings I think I've mostly overcome since the days of my "because I said so", Catholic school childhood.  However, I did have to stop and ask myself, do I use questions as weapons?  Have I used questions to disadvantage, discredit, or disengage people?  Not my students so much, because I don't often find myself locked in a heated debate with 3rd graders, but I do feel like I have used questions this way in my other relationships.  Questions are powerful tools, but every tool can be a weapon depending on how you wield it.

When I reached the section on what makes a good questions, I felt like Uhl was reading my mind.  Just before reading this section I stopped to follow a line of thinking and reflect in my journal.   I had just written/drawn a pyramid describing my own hierarchy of questioning, placing the "who, what, when , where, and which" questions at the bottom, given that these are all concrete questions with "factual" answers.  They are not interpretive, but simply help us to gather the data.  I placed "how" above these, and consider it the question of cause and effect.  In my view "how" is about relationships that exist in the data collected by the concrete questions.  Finally, at the top is "why".  And just like Uhl, I defined "why" as the question of meaning.  I have long had a theory that the ability to contemplate "why" is what makes human beings distinct as a species.  It was reassuring to read that I am not the only one who has contemplated this and that perhaps my musings aren't just nuts.  The enigmatic thing about "why" is that it holds more ambiguity than clarity.  It leads to more questions than answers.  It sheds light on those things which are decidedly subjective, and yet, it is the most powerful tool we have in the quest for truth.  I love "why".  It is my reason for being who I am.

In my fantasy middle/high school, I think "inquiry" would be a core course unto itself.  In it, students would learn what good questions look like, how to ask them, how to listen, and how to follow a line of questioning to a satisfying conclusion. Perhaps by their junior or senior year of high school "inquiry" would start to look more like "research".  By then, students would be thinking metacognitively about their own questions, searching for patterns and relationships in/between their thinking and the thinking of other thinkers; looking for what really excites and intrigues them and pinpointing the questions that remain persistently unanswered.  Every class would have a "wonder wall" and every student, a "what-if" journal.  I could go on and on, but just image what that could do to prepare students for college, a satisfying career, and/or a future as a life-long learner. 

I think there's no doubt, I always have, still do, and always will, love the questions!


Question Based Lesson
I was really intrigued by several of the explorations.  I can imagine using any one of them in the classroom.  It would be simple enough to try the 50 questions method for generating questions through observation, utilizing the gallery as our setting.  Since we have a brand new show opening this week, this might be a perfectly timed opportunity.  I would probably scale it back to 20 questions for my students.  Why? Because I think the idea of the number 50 would freak them out a bit, even though I'm pretty sure they could do it.  I just don't want them to freeze up right at the start.  Obviously, they can write more than 20 questions if they can think of them.  After a brief discussion about what makes a "juicy" question, I might ask each of them to choose their 3 juiciest.  Then, as a group, we would visit each piece and entertain the 3 questions chosen by the observer.  With a typical class size, this would take forever, but because I only have 3-5 students in each of my classes, I think this would be totally doable.   

Entertaining "why". Like VTS, this kind of viewing experience sends the message that there isn't just one right answer when it comes to art.  In fact, the viewers interpretation and experience is just as, maybe more important than the artist's original intention.  Why? Meaning is not fixed.  It is not a dead thing trapped within a frame.  The meaning is in us, the viewer.  I believe that is valid and is real.  Allowing them to generate the questions as well as entertain them as a group underscores this message all the more.  What I'm not sure about is how or if I would spin that experience directly into an art-making activity.  Thoughts?