STAND UP AND ASK

Asking questions is not only a skill but a culture. We have created a culture where asking questions is an insult to the teacher - ANJU MUSAFIR.

Last week, I spent a good amount of time teaching Hamlets famous monologue To be,or not to be,- that is the question: I realised how Hamlet as a renaissance scholar not only asks questions but listens to himself and reasons.

Asking questions is not only a skill but a culture. Unfortunately, in India, we have created an educational culture where asking questions is an insult to the teacher.In conventional classrooms,it is the teacher who asks questions much like the interrogative methods of the police.

When I was a high school student in a prestigious school in Delhi, I recall the techniques we invented to avoid being asked questions. Firstly,you never looked the teacher in the eye.Secondly,you ducked behind the person sitting in front.You made your body small by hunching it up a bit and crouched behind.As a result one fervently hoped that the teacher would pick the one she saw.

Why did I not like being asked a question There Im asking you one but as I have the upper hand in this one-way conversation,I will proceed to explain my understanding.In a classroom situation,if one does not know the answer or gives a wrong one,there is instant humiliation or ridicule.The teacher picks you and this act isolates you from the mass of the class.

More importantly, when a person of a higher status or authority asks questions to one who is in a lower status,the person with a lower status is psychologically disadvantaged.This happens in the classroom, this happens at home when parents ask the child,what did you do at school today,whose phone was it,what time did you return last night and so on.With a slight twist the same questions can be asked by a suspicious spouse!

So while little children grew up asking questions about the world,they entered the classroom and were taught to keep quiet with a finger on their lips.They were to be seen and not heard.The reason why teachers do not like children asking questions is because they think too many questions will create chaos and more importantly,they think they may not know the answer.
If the teacher becomes open enough to say that all questions are welcome,that there are no stupid questions and that I do not have the answers but we can seek together,we will create questioning and not subservient children.

The culture of the fear of questions permeates the Indian administration too.For very long,administrators took over the role and authority of the colonial masters.Their work was cloaked in secrecy and it was only with the Right to Information Act that we opened the doors to a lower status ordinary citizen asking questions.But as anyone who has used the RTI act will tell you,the upper echelons do not like being asked questions either! It is viewed as an insult and with suspicion.

Journalists and citizens who set out on quests to discover truths paid with their lives for asking the right questions.For too long,asking questions has always been the prerogative of those in power.It is time we changed it because when a child or a citizen asks a question,it empowers the seeker.It makes the person asking more active and engaged.If a person can ask a question,somewhere deep down,he or she already knows the answer.And for those questions for which we have no answers,it is still important to ask them.

 

(Anju Musafir is founder of Mahatma Gandhi International School and a teacher trainer with a passion for teaching/learning. You can write in to her at anjumusafir@indiatimes.com)

Courtesy by Ahmedabad Mirror Tue, 19-10-2010