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July 10 - August 11, 2019
A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.
that if you never actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you’re not really questioning—you’re complaining.
“We think someone else—someone smarter4 than us, someone more capable, with more resources—will solve that problem. But there isn’t anyone else.”
Good questioners tend to be aware of, and quite comfortable with, their own ignorance
“One good question can give rise to several layers of answers, can inspire decades-long searches for solutions, can generate whole new fields of inquiry, and can prompt changes in entrenched thinking,” Firestein writes. “Answers, on the other hand, often end the process.”
“Just asking or hearing a question phrased a certain way produces an almost palpable feeling of discovery and new understanding. Questions produce the lightbulb effect.”
In a time when so much of what we know is subject to revision or obsolescence, the comfortable expert must go back to being a restless learner.
We must become, in a word, neotenous (neoteny being a biological term that describes the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood).
“You don’t learn unless you question.”
asking Why can be the first step to bringing about change in almost any context.
Just asking Why without taking any action may be a source of stimulating thought or conversation, but it is not likely to produce change.
Q (questioning) + A (action) = I (innovation).
Q – A = P (philosophy).
The Why/What If/How progression offers a simplified way to approach questioning;
A journey of inquiry is bound to lead you into the unknown (as it should), but if you have a sense of the kinds of questions to ask at various stages along the way, you’ve at least got some road markers.
having a process helps you to keep taking next steps—so that, as he put it, “even when you don’t know what41 you’re doing, you still know what to do.”
Often the worst thing you can do with a difficult question is to try to answer it too quickly. When the mind is coming up with What If possibilities, these fresh, new ideas can take time to percolate and form. They often result from connecting existing ideas in unusual and interesting ways.
When we start teaching too much, too soon, says Gopnik, we’re inadvertently cutting off paths of inquiry and exploration that kids might otherwise pursue on their own. As Gopnik puts it, “Children are the research and development division of the human species.” If they are permitted to do that research—to raise and explore their own questions, through various forms of experimentation, and without being burdened with instructions—they exhibit signs of more creativity and curiosity.
this new world demands citizens who are self-learners; who are creative and resourceful; who can adjust and adapt to constant change.
Five learning skills, or “habits of mind,” were at the core of her school, and each was matched up with a corresponding question:
School
Evidence: How do we know what’s true or false? What evidence counts?
Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes, or looked at it from a different direction?
Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before?
Conjecture: What if it were different? Relevance: Why does this matter?
you have to have an open-mindedness to the possibility that you’re wrong, or that anything may be wrong,”
often when you give kids more freedom to pursue what they’re interested in, they become easier to control.
students must develop the “habit” of learning and questioning, that knowledge cannot be force-fed to them.
Aronson said. “Fear is the enemy of curiosity. Unfortunately, if you’re in that situation, you may feel pressure to look a certain way to others.” That can cause students to act as if they already know or just don’t care. “You’re inclined to play it safe,” Aronson says, rather than risk the possibility of confirming the stereotype.
Stereotypes
Even in the most progressive schools, questioning is still primarily the domain of the teacher. “Questions are used a lot in the classroom but it’s mostly one-way,” says Rothstein. “It’s not about the student asking, it’s about the teacher prompting the student by using questions that the teacher has formulated.” By taking this approach, Rothstein says, teachers “have inadvertently contributed to the professionalization of asking questions—to the idea that only the people who know more are allowed to ask.”
Next, the students were asked to “prioritize” their questions: to figure out which three were the most important to move the discussion forward.
it’s not enough to encourage students to toss out questions endlessly; to question effectively, they must learn how to analyze their own questions and zero in on ones they would like to pursue further.
You don’t have to know the answer to ask a question, so the smart kids don’t dominate.
Rothstein maintains that questioning is a more subtle and complex skill than many realize, involving three kinds of sophisticated thinking—divergent, convergent, and metacognitive. Some of it comes naturally to kids, but some must be learned and practiced.
nonexperts or outsiders are often better at questioning than the experts.
Expertise is helpful at certain points, not so helpful at others; wide-open, unfettered divergent thinking is critical at one stage, discipline and focus is called for at another.
you can attempt to adjust the way you look at the world so that your perspective more closely aligns with that of a curious child.
To do so, we must: • Step back. • Notice what others miss. • Challenge assumptions (including our own). • Gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry. • Question the questions we’re asking. • Take ownership of a particular question.
asking Why requires stepping back from “doing,” it also demands a step back from “knowing.”
Suzuki writes, “The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert.” Such a mind, he added, is “open to all possibilities” and “can see things as they are.”
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a Zen practitioner, says the key to adopting this manner of observing and questioning is to make an effort to become, in his word, “detached”—from everyday thoughts, distractions, preconceived notions, habitual behaviors, and even from oneself. “Basically, you begin to observe yourself as if you were a third party.” If you can achieve that sense of detachment, your thinking becomes more “flexible and fluid,” Komisar maintains, and “you find yourself in a better position to question everything.”
Sutton notes: “It means thinking of things that are usually assumed to be negative as positive, and vice versa. It can mean reversing assumptions about cause and effect, or what matters most versus least. It means not traveling through life on automatic pilot.”
When people fail to see what’s right in front of them, it’s often because “they stopped looking too soon.”
To question well, you must have the ability to say, ‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’”
Kelly Carlin noted, and his advice to parents was “Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.”
Questions that challenge the prevailing assumptions are useful and sometimes catalytic—but they can also be flawed themselves. Assumptions and biases of our own may be embedded in the questions we ask.
Burton adds, “Every time you come up with a question, you should be wondering, What are the underlying assumptions of that question? Is there a different question I should be asking?”
you can improve a question by opening and closing it.
Worded this way, the question almost forces one to confront the assumption within the original question—and to consider that it might not be valid
So this might cause me to go back and revise that original question to make it more accurate:
perhaps the best way to question a question is to take it out into the world with you—and see if the assumptions behind it hold up when exposed to real people and situations.
