Some of the educational reforms considered radical in the late ‘60s have come to be accepted – even institutionalised – in our current school system (as we saw in Part 1). But others have been less warmly embraced. The ‘inquiry method’ of learning is a case in point.
In Teaching as a Subversive Activity, the authors – Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner – cast a critical eye over conventional approaches to teaching. Following Marshall McLuhan’s dictum “the medium is the message”, they regard the method and the content of learning as intertwined. They condemn the narrow focus on ‘covering’ syllabi and on seeking to transmit content, wholesale, to largely passive students. They warn that school authorities usually underestimate the importance of how content is presented. And they propose that teachers can remedy these ills by employing an ‘inquiry method’: encouraging students to ask substantive questions, play a role in determining which problems are worth studying, and consider which procedures of inquiry should be used.
Postman and Weingartner insist that “once you have learned how to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.” They don’t go in for questioning that requires students to guess what the teacher is thinking, or parrot memorised material. Good questions, they suggest, are ones that boost the will and the capacity to learn, increase joy in learning, build confidence and open minds to unsuspected possibilities. Presumably they’re appalled that “the most important and intellectual ability [humanity] has yet developed – the art and science of asking questions – is not taught in school!”
The book calls for a revolution. I’d like to believe it’s already occurred, but my own schooling (and more recently, my experiences of working with children) has led me to doubt it. Perhaps it lies ahead; The Philosophy Club can be part of it.
In our collaborative enquiries, children pursue big, unanswered questions that tickle their curiosity. They propose a range of possible responses and support these responses with reasons. In the give-and-take of dialogue, the children are responsible for evaluating whatever arguments are on the table, thinking up alternatives, and making up their own minds. Collaboration is vital to the intellectual process of enquiry, because the kids build on each other’s ideas and they’re provoked to reflect very critically when they encounter divergent opinions. They become constructively sceptical, recognising that no claim – not even their own – deserves to be unquestioningly accepted.
It’s worth reading Teaching Students to Ask Questions Instead of Answering Them, Matthew Bowker’s account of his distinctive approach to enquiry learning. It’s a rich paper that covers a lot of ground before reaching this conclusion:
I have found it extremely important to learn to practice silence in class. This means being comfortable with one or two minutes of silence, if necessary, while the conversation stalls. If the teacher is always ready to comment or ask a provocative question, then students do not have the room (or the need) to take on those responsibilities. Often, after a long silence, students will pose the question that has left them feeling stuck with the material. Sometimes that question is simply, ‘Who cares?’ which I take to be a crucially important question, one I explore as often as possible.
In much the same spirit, Postman and Weingartner appeal to teachers to
confront your students with some sort of problem which might interest them. Then, allow them to work the problem through… Don’t be frightened by the long stretches of silence that might occur. Silence may mean that the students are thinking.
Sound advice, I think. It’s not sufficient to pay lip service to developing independent thinking, and we can’t expect students to assimilate thinking skills by accident or by osmosis. We need to make time for explicitly metacognitive work. And we need to regard the cultivation of good thinking as central to what it means to educate.
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The Philosophy Club works with teachers and students to develop a culture of critical and creative thinking through collaborative enquiry and dialogue.
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