Asking Questions
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute
[Editor's Note: This entry also appears HERE on the History News Network.]

A recent newspaper article about asking questions in the public school classroom poses an interesting problem. It seems that many middle school students in the Milwaukee area and elsewhere, as many as one in three, are afraid to ask teachers questions because their peers will tease them, calling them "stupid" or "dumb." Says one girl, "When you're in school, the thing you care about most is what other people think." Other reasons for student silence include a child's temperament, poor language skills, and unsympathetic teachers. The unwillingness to participate in class carries a price: Educational specialists observe that students who don't ask questions are likely to fall behind, become discouraged, and lose interest in school.

Many teachers understand the cost of student silence and use a variety of methods to combat it. Some praise the value of questions raised, some give extra credit for good questions, some create a code of conduct that prohibits laughing at questions by other students, while other teachers simply urge young people to ignore the taunts of their peers. One Milwaukee area middle school offers after-school study groups where questions can be asked of volunteer tutors, often students in advanced grades. This environment is "safer."

This student silence may be found at the college and university level, as well, especially in open admissions institutions. It is part of a common anti-intellectual approach that says, "I'm not here to learn. I'm here to graduate and get a good job." Getting through is the goal for many, and education has very little or nothing to do with the process. Often, during my forty years as a history professor, I heard the equivalent of "Tell me what I must memorize to get through this class. As for thinking about this stuff, let alone raising questions, forget it." Multiple choice tests accommodate, and thus are popular. So too are professors who tell students exactly what they want to see in a blue book. I once took a history course as an undergraduate that required students to repeat a professor's lectures, almost word for word. I thought I was a stenographer. On the other hand, I had another history professor who rarely lectured, choosing instead to sit down before a class and wait (oh, those long, awkward silences) for questions. He changed my life.

I'm of the opinion that in my discipline questions are almost as important as answers. Indeed, I think now that 30 percent of a final examination should be student questions. Thoughtful inquiries are surely as valuable as memorized answers, especially if the larger purpose of education is life-long learning. Isn't all history to be found in textbooks? Of course not, but that's often the impression students have. And we have failed as professors and historians if we don't challenge that silly idea.

Surely, even in the introductory survey courses, professors could and should do more than simply add to the historical narrative found in the assigned reading. They need to raise questions about the validity of primary sources, the assortment of ideologies that have infected the writing of history over the centuries, and the often fascinating controversies that swirl around major figures and events. And there are practical questions too, such as how to find journals and magazines that offer reliable articles and book reviews. And even undergraduates should know something of the hierarchy of book publishers and what a university press and a vanity press are. Ignorance of such matters often results in college graduates buying and believing The Da Vinci Code and swallowing the absurd thesis, from a recent book, that Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual. I have met history majors who have never heard of Oxford University Press and could not name a single scholarly journal. They often join the ranks of the millions who depend exclusively upon local newspapers and television news channels to provide them with perspective and truth.

In turn, students should be required to devise their own questions about classroom information. Rather than read a canned essay on, say, the 1920s in America, I would be encouraged to see questions about the role of Christian fundamentalism in the Scopes Trial, the issue of prohibition and good health, the wisdom of Calvin Coolidge's approach to the presidency, the benevolence of Henry Ford, and the originality of Charlie Chaplin. Rather than just encourage regurgitation, why not require listeners to participate in the intellectual excitement of making sense of the past?

You'll notice that I said "require," for most students, at least in my experience, will do little or nothing if merely encouraged. In a class of 30, I would require each student to ask five questions (good or bad) in class. And I would require them to write questions they had thought about during the course on their final examination. If they borrow from each other, and the result is less than stimulating, why is that worse than what we read now? At least college students will not think that "History" may be found in a single book whose contents must be memorized. They may even catch a glimpse of the historical complexities, the detective work, and the challenges of analysis and writing that stimulate at least the best of their professors.

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