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Beautiful Questions

Recently I finished a book called A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger. A speaker at a conference this year recommended it, and the title intrigued me. As the name suggests, the focus is on how quality questions generally drive the best businesses to true success. Asking the right questions is an essential aspect to strong leadership. Beyond thinking about leadership in the business world, the notion of quality questioning can be applied to one’s personal life but also about schools and education. In fact, the book makes a case that our education system generally rewards answers from students, even though the evidence suggests that being able to ask the right question is an essential skill in the workplace. Not unlike Ken Robinson, who maintains that our educational system intentionally educates creativity out of children, Berger maintains we do the same for curiosity and questioning. He highlights that human questioning hits its peak at about four years old, where research shows kids can ask over 300 questions a day – a data point I can validate from research in my own house.
I decided to put all of this to test in my Ethics class this week. This happened to be the class where we wrestled with the moral dilemma of balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the community. I often ask students to consider the ethics of torture in this context, exploring some of the context around Guantanamo Bay and other case studies from history. But this year I tried a method suggested by the book. I split the kids into groups and put the statement “Torture can be ethically justified” on the board and gave them fifteen minutes to brainstorm any question they could think of in relation to that statement. Eventually I had them refine open-ended questions into closed questions and then guided them to rewrite some starting with “How might we” as in “How might we understand…“ or “How might we know...” Finally, I asked them to isolate the three best questions their group had created. Here are a few examples:
  • How might someone’s identity change how they are tortured or treated?
  • How might we justify things we know are not right?
  • Is torture simply a form of revenge?
  • Who decides if torture is justified?
  • What kinds of punishments should be considered torture?
Finally, we reflected a bit on the experience and upon what they thought made a good question. We concluded that a great question makes one consider a problem in a new way. We also thought it was different for the emphasis be on asking rather than solving. Finally, we realized that we are not often asked to refine questions and think about their quality – usually we just spit them out.

I think there is a connection here to Curriculum 2020 and student directed learning. While good questions have always had value, I suspect companies are looking for provocative thinkers more so than content producers. All of this has led me to my own more beautiful question: How might we teach the skills of questioning more thoughtfully at Berwick?

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