Student initiated questions driving instruction are
all the rage these days and rightfully so. However, this is not a new
pedagogical aim; we have wanted kids to ask questions in the classroom for a
long time, but the problem often lies in how do we teach kids to ask the “right”
questions. This post is not intended to dive into uncovering or defining the
right question. Rather, I would like to think about a certain type of question,
particularly philosophical questions or as Matt Lawrence, the 2014 Hawaii State
Teacher of the Year, would say, “a good question for philosophy.”
My dissertation, Philosophy Goes to High School:
An Inquiry into the Philosopher’s Pedagogy, aimed to clarify what we mean
by philosophy, especially in the context of the 21st century American school. I found that we tend to
look to the history of Western philosophy to provide the “guidelines” of the
philosophical question; if it is an inquiry that Plato, Descartes, or Kant
engaged in, it must be philosophical. Or we generically define philosophical
questions as those that cannot be answered. Yes, I am over-generalizing, but
the point is that neither of these definitions help educators teach students
how to ask philosophical questions.
For example, a few years ago, two of my colleagues,
Jake Nichols and Wess Unten, could not get their students to ask questions that
moved beyond the texts of their freshmen English classes. Their students were
more concerned with finding solutions to questions concerning plot, setting,
and character development. Needless to say, the students were not inspired by
their questions and the resulting “inquiries” rarely resembled anything that
would be considered a philosophical inquiry. I guess they were pretty brutal.
Nichols and Unten are not academic philosophers,
but they are excellent veteran teachers. At this time they were relatively new
to p4c and rather than giving up on the initiative, they realized they had to
establish a set of criteria to help students move the depth of their questions
from the “shallow end of the pool” to the “deep end.” Essentially, they were
looking for a way to teach students to bring a certain level of wonder into the
classroom through their questions. What they developed is an instructional tool
we still use to “teach” teenagers how to frame a good question for philosophy.
A good question for philosophy:
1.
Uses The Good
Thinker’s Toolkit (Jackson, 2001).
2.
Moves beyond the
text/stimulus to question a larger issue.
3.
It makes
you go "hmmmmm..." and produces more questions.
4.
Is something that you
really want to think about; it's meaningful.
Would Plato or Deleuze agree with the criteria?
Maybe not, but I am pretty sure students and teachers are not that concerned.
They care about formulating deep questions that matter to them; questions that
make school worthwhile and relevant. For now, this criteria seems to help us
move closer to living the examined life.
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| The Good Thinker's Toolkit Question Starters |
*I have thousands of photos documenting the questions of our students. These just happen to be the ones that surfaced first.
WATR= What are the reasons
