A Question Is a Question Is a Question

by Ruth McClain, Ohio University—Chilicothe, Chilicothe, Ohio

From her hospital bed in France, Gertrude Stein once asked of Alice B. Toklas, "What is the answer?" Receiving no answer, Stein then posed, "In that case, what is the question?" It's doubtful that Stein ever got an answer to either of those age-old questions, but one thing is certain: Questioning is the single most influential teaching act, and asking the right question or, if I may propose, making the right statement―one that requires drawing upon both content knowledge and personal experience―promotes open-ended inquiry and engages students in exploration of a text in a way that very little else does, a trend that has hardly changed over the years.

It would seem that, too often, we teachers have mistakenly equated quantity of questions with quality, but if we are to teach logically, we must be knowledgeable about how to frame questions so that they guide the students' thought processes. Of course, we're acquainted with Bloom's taxonomy, but, even so, how many of us have posed questions that are predominately those concerned with simple data and fact recall―all of which fall under lower-order questions. Perhaps, we have posed such questions because they're easy to write and even easier to grade, and, after all, having a little factual knowledge is not a bad thing, is it? Of course not! Such questions seem "safe." Yet, they afford the student little opportunity to engage in a process where one question leads to another and another and another, and one answer only poses more questions. Doesn't it seem logical that there is a direct correlation between the level of questions asked by teachers and the level of students' responses? I doubt any of us want our students to mimic Stein, who penned, "I tell you...there ain't any answer, just you believe me, there ain't any answer...there ain't going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that's the answer" (Stein, 1946).

Regardless, good questions make good teachers great teachers, and great essential questions have some basic criteria in common:

They are open-ended and resist a simple or single right answer.
They clarify understanding and extend thinking.
They can be revisited to engage students in ongoing dialogue and debate.
They are deliberately thought-provoking and often controversial.
They lead to other questions and create links between ideas.

As Ernest Boyer (1983) said, "If we want people to learn to think, you ask them hard questions and let them wrestle with the answers." I propose first, then, that the questioning process begin with us―the teachers. Every time we plan a lesson, there are questions we must consider:

What big questions will this lesson help students answer?
What reasoning abilities must my students have to develop answers?
What information will my students need to answer the questions, and where will they find such information?
How will I find out whether or not my students are actually learning something?
What techniques will my students employ to communicate what they have learned?

Further, every time we plan a lesson, we must also keep in mind that challenging questions require students to compare, analyze, evaluate, and draw inferences. Is there, then, anywhere in the curriculum for objective questions such as multiple choice and true-false? The answer is a resounding yes. Let me propose scenario one.

In my senior high school English class, the students had just completed a unit on the romantic poets. Consider Keats's "To Autumn":

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,―
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The question comes in the form of a multiple-choice statement:

In "To Autumn," Keats's tone is one of:

a. joy
b. serenity and peace
c. sorrow
d. indifference

The statement is purposefully designed to confuse the students. Certainly, Keats must have felt a great deal of joy in viewing the scene on the granary floor. Does he equate nature with a person, or does nature remain an abstraction only in his poetic mind? He also must have experienced sorrow in knowing that the day, like the season, was dying; yet he blends living and dying, the pleasant and the unpleasant, and accepts the reality of the mixed nature of the world. Or does he? Does he feel at peace with whatever interpretation he makes within himself?

You see, there are no easy answers. Rather, the student is required to analyze all situations and support his or her decision contextually. To do this, a student must pay very close attention to the text, and the teacher must be open-minded with regard to the student's justification of the answer. As Stephen Dunning (1990) states in Transactions with Literature, "The teacher...must be ready to face the fact that the student's reaction will inevitably be in terms of his/her own temperament and background. Undoubtedly these may often lead the student to do injustice to the text. Nevertheless, the student's primary experience of the work will have had meaning for him/her in those personal terms and no others" (p. 54).

Students may help each other in thinking through an answer and in finding contextual evidence, but they may not argue against another student. If the teacher grants credit to one student who chooses a particular answer and who had that answer marked incorrectly, the teacher must also give credit to all other students who had the same answer. In some cases, every answer may be correct. In all the years I have been using this kind of statement-questioning, I have found that students feel less pressure to come up with the right answer―you know, the one the teacher feels is correct―and the class builds a kind of community, for, after all, there are multiple interpretations to any piece of literature, depending somewhat on the personal experiences a student brings to that piece of literature. This exercise also promotes oral discourse―that ELA standard that is most often used in teaching but is evaluated the least in our classrooms.

In scenario two, the students are also free to deal with their own reactions to the text, this time in an essay format. Take the example, for instance, from senior student Kevin. After reading Hamlet, the teacher posed the question, "How are you similar to or different from Hamlet?" The initial reaction of the students is to deny that they are in any way like Hamlet―they couldn't be since they are not the son or daughter of a murdered king. The teacher must try to find points of contact with the literary character in question and ask those "wh" questions that lead the students to both reflection and analysis. Questions like these come into play here.

What are Hamlet's personality traits?
Where do your own experiences intersect with those of Hamlet?
What is presented factually about Hamlet?
What emotional effect does the play create within you?
In what ways is Hamlet a "true-to-life" character?

After brainstorming Hamlet's personality traits and noting them on the blackboard, students begin to get an idea of just the kind of person Hamlet really is. It's obvious, then, that the personal contribution of any reader is an essential element in any vital reading of literature. Kevin writes:

Very like a Hamlet! How so? First, Hamlet doubts himself and his intentions using his false insanity to try and decide whether the ghost speaks true, whether he really does love Ophelia, and whether his mother has been loyal to her husband, Hamlet's father. I, too, often doubt myself―though not without reason, and I have lots of unresolved internal struggles.

Hamlet is often too generous. When he has the opportunity to kill Claudius, he hesitates and gives Claudius more time to repent which he does not. This also gives Hamlet more time to make sure he wants to kill Claudius. I commonly had bad timing waiting until it's too late. I leave things unresolved because of my indecision and become frustrated never getting anything finished.

Hamlet is also moody, and he swings from loving Ophelia to criticizing her. At times, he hates his stepfather, and at other times, he feels pity for him. Wow! I have big mood swings. Sometimes, I'm quiet and introspecting in the morning and then vociferous and outward by afternoon. However determined Hamlet seems to be, he is essentially incapable of taking quick, decisive action―his major nemesis. I usually procrastinate important decisions, and then my family, whom I need for security and support, gets angry with me. The one major difference, though, that I see between Hamlet and me is that Hamlet is an excellent and convincing speaker. I, on the other hand, am a terrible speaker and have a hard time conveying a message or even speaking on the listener's own terms. Maybe I do better on paper!

In this short essay, Kevin is forced to analyze both his and Hamlet's personalities and then synthesize his findings in writing. The question, then, is presented only as a suggestion―a springboard for composition―and the teacher must provide time and opportunity for the student to reflect and organize thought. It is as senior student Sara stated on the back of her senior picture, "You taught me how to think, not what to think."

Finally, let us all beware of those faulty questions for which students provide masterful and clever answers. Want an example? OK. Consider Carl Sandburg's "Fog":

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Too often, we ask faulty questions:

The multiple question: Which thing is the clearest? How do you know? What is Sandburg doing here? Student response―I don't know.
The question that has no follow-up: How does the cat leave? Silently.
The vague question: What big things are poets concerned about? Who cares!
Yes-no questions: Does Sandburg effectively compare the cat with the fog?
Accepting questions: What is your reaction to the poem? You may get an answer of, It's stupid.
Echoing questions: What is the metaphor? Student response―The metaphor is the cat image, and the fog acts like a cat. Teacher response―Very good. The metaphor is the cat image, and the fog acts like a cat.

And so, with effective questioning and the knowledge that a question is only as good as the response it evokes, we can certainly understand that "in the interchange of ideas the student will be led to compare his/her reactions with those of other students and of the teacher. [Students] will see that a particular work may give rise to attitudes and judgments different from [their] own. Some...will be more defensible than others in terms of the text as a whole. Yet, [students] will also become aware of the fact that sometimes more than one reasonable interpretation is possible" (Rosenblatt, 1995, p. 75).

Even Stein, herself, didn't have all the answers, but she certainly kept on questioning. "Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something," Stein (1937) wrote. So ask those hard questions using language that allows students to express feelings and ideas that may differ from your own―this is the essential tool for learning.

References

Boyer, Ernest L. (1983). High school: A report on secondary education in America. New York: Harper & Row.

Dunning, Stephen. (1990). Exploring a poem. In Edmund J. Farrel & James R. Squire (Eds.), Transactions with literature: A fifty year perspective. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. (1995). Literature as exploration. New York: Modern Language Association.

Stein, Gertrude. (1946). Brewsie and Willie. New York: Random House.

Stein, Gertrude. (1937). Everybody's autobiography. New York: Random House.

Ruth McClain currently teaches English at Ohio University—Chillicothe. She is the Executive Director of OCTELA and an ELA consultant. Ruth is in her forty-fifth year of teaching, twenty-eight of which were in secondary education.

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