The Questions

“Life is not about the destination, it is about the journey.”-Uknown

“There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”-AJ Muste

This is a blog about having questions that might not have answers, but looking for the answers anyway.  At times I don’t even know if I can completely define the question.  I only know that there is something compelling me in a certain direction, something that can only be began with the words, “I wonder…”  “I wonder if there is a god?”  “I wonder if I know what is true love?”  “I wonder if I should be doing something else with my life?”

I feel trying to definitively answer these questions would drive me mad.  However, I feel they are essential to my growth by giving me a frame of reference.  In science, the observer can often construe observations of a given phenomenon because he/she was looking for something specific and was blinded to all of what was occurring.  In other words, you find what you are looking for.  I feel the questions I have give me direction.  Not necessarily to a given point, but along a path that allows me many viewpoints to consider within my conceptual frameworks of god, love, and purpose.

What I try to avoid, are answers.  In the sciences, we recognize that no theory can ever be proven, because for a theory to have been proven means that it will have to have predicted the outcome of a phenomenon in any circumstance.  At this point, no human, or collection of humans, can claim to have tested all known circumstances, because to test all known circumstances requires to have found all knowledge.  This is part of the beauty I find in science.  By never claiming to have an absolute answer, there is room for constant growth and increased precision.

Answers often set boundaries, boundaries of thought and discussion, which can become the basis for dispute.  So many people feel they have the answers.  I wonder if they have ever stopped long enough to define the question and decide if it is a question that can be answered.  If a question can be answered definitively, is it really worth asking or is it by extension redundant?

Of course, a teacher suggesting that all answers are redundant would be utterly blasphemous.  To suggest to an 8^th grade classroom that there is no right answer would likely be the start of an uprising and get me fired.  For students at that developmental level, a certain amount of stability and structure is required for effective thinking.  However, I think that as educators and as a society, we need to start worrying about the questions our students have, or worse, the questions they don’t have.  An obstacle that I’m seeing on many days in my classroom in Mabalane is that my students do not have questions.

To my students, school has become a house of answers.  Each day they take pages of notes, which ultimately derive from a textbook, and are rarely asked to do work of their own.  My students are typically not expected to contribute their ideas or their questions in the every day educational setting.  This has led me to wonder, what do my students wonder about?  I’ve been in Mozambique for over six months and I still don’t know the word wonder in Portuguese or Changana because you never hear it in everyday conversation.  As my students are walking home from school, pilando amendoim (crushing peanuts), or falling asleep, what are they thinking about?  I wonder if they’ve ever been asked to express these ideas in school?

I think I will try to find out what my students are wondering about.  I’m also going to continue to pressure them to wonder about things in the classroom.  It’s been an up hill battle thus far, but I’m starting to find ways to get my students to think and make their ideas visible.  I plan to continue to integrate thinking-out loud in my instruction to demonstrate the importance of questions in thinking and how to go about responding to questions to further understanding.  My classes will continue to demonstrate that the product of learning pales in comparison to the process.