Questions, Anyone?

For my graduate course, “Philosophy of Education,” we’re discussing some of the major concepts of philosophy. Two of those are questioning and reflection. I’ve discovered through writing some of my assignments the following ideas that I thought I’d share here. Let me know what you think.

Regarding questioning:

• One note I have written down from Dr.Walker's lecture is that questions are one way to obtain truth, but those questions have to be deep, probing questions. I think about the way much of our society uses questions today, and it's clear that not many are asking those deep questions, especially of each other. We certainly ask a ton of questions, but many are fairly superficial: How's it going? How was your day? What do you do? Did you have a good weekend? Hot, isn't it? Here we are making conversation, not truth. We already know the answer (or at least the one we expect to get) and are simply attempting to appear interested. Part of the reason for this, frankly, could be the way we now communicate to each other. It's fairly rare for deep, probing questions to be presented on Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and email. And even if there were, would we have the patience to answer? Or the time? No, deep, probing questions come out over a long walk, or a letter, or around a friendly feast with the television turned off. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and a few of their friends got together regularly for beers, discussion, and mutual critique of their writings. They produced great literature that responds deeply to human questions. We sit around our laptops and cell phones, checking for witty one-liners.

• Another way people use the questions they ask is as an "in" towards talking about themselves. I've never been more aware of this than with talking about my 18-month old daughter. She has a rare skin disease, so rare that we had to go to Mayo to even find someone who had studied it before. Fewer than 200,000 people in the world have this. There are visible spots that are a result of this disease, so we routinely field questions about it from strangers or others she is meeting for the first time. We tell them what the disease is, how rare it is, and what we're doing about it. I estimate that 75% of the time, the response is, "Well I (or someone I know) have something just like that," followed by intricate details of skin lesions. I've caught myself doing it as well in conversations with others, listening in for an opening to share about my experiences. Now I've tried to discipline myself to always ask at least one more question after someone has answered a question of mine towards them. It's been liberating, not trying to desperately fling myself into conversations every chance I get.

• If truth requires questions, then questions require a curiosity to discover new truths. This is not easy, and I don't think many people really want this. The phrase “ignorance is bliss” exists specifically because of the consequences of knowledge. And it’s these same consequences that make most adults, no matter how much they don’t want to admit it, as adamantly opposed to losing their ignorance. If what we know is true, we don’t have to change anything. Add something new or contrary to our existing knowledge, and then we might have to change our actions. Change is hard. I once had someone give me the advice of "Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to." I believe most of us take that to heart. We don't want to know that we've got it all wrong, that there is evidence against our beliefs, or that there is a better way of doing things.

• Also, it is essential for growth to surround ourselves with people who are good questioners. And these individuals are hard to find. Without someone in our lives to push us with questions, to require us to think, to ask us to grow, we simply won’t reach potential.