Break the "I'm Sorry" Habit

                          I’m Sorry

Bump into someone inadvertently, and most of us will say a short “sorry.”  Bump into someone accidentally and crash her Starbuck’s latte onto the floor—most of us will say, “OMG! I’m so very sorry.  Let me buy you a new one.”  Bump into someone on purpose because you want to capture his attention, then to say “I’m sorry” is coy.  Bump into someone to hurt her, “I’m sorry” is, at best, sarcastic.  Context, of course, determines the appropriateness of the expression. There are clear instances when making amends to some through an apology using the word “sorry” is important not only to the relationship but to the mental and spiritual health of the one making the amends. 

The word “sorry” derives from language roots implying ‘sore’ and ‘distressed.’  The word has various meanings: (1) to feel compassion for or pain for someone else’s misfortune—as in “so sorry for your loss”; (2) to feel regret, as in “I’m sorry I hurt you”; and (3) to be in poor or pitiable condition, as in “That’s a sorry state of affairs.” Frequent expressions of the word “sorry” include ‘feeling sorry for yourself’; ‘sorry to say’; and the more contemporary ‘sorry not sorry.’ 

But the expression “I’m sorry” has too often become an unfortunate habit—close to an addiction—especially for women, especially in school.  A compulsive apologizer prefaces and exits most discussions with “I’m sorry.”  One student clocked no fewer than 18 uses of “I’m sorry” in an interchange that showed her to be incisive and insightful.  She had every reason to be assertive, but disowned it with her constant “I’m sorry.”  She was, in essence, regretting her own brilliance.

We create our reality by what we say about ourselves.  To say “I’m sorry” when entering a discussion is to imply such things as “I don’t have a right to speak up,” “Please excuse me for intruding where I don’t belong,” “I don’t deserve attention,” “I’m not worthy,” “I’m not worth it,” “My voice doesn’t belong.”  To habitually say “I’m sorry” for all but momentary infractions and important amends, is to constantly erode confidence, promote self-shrinking, and, inevitably, real reason for self-pity as others will be trained to trivialize and dismiss the sorry person. “Sorry” also implies shame and diminishment. 

Additionally, to say “I’m sorry,” a contraction, metaphorically of the self, and syntactically for “I am sorry”—is to imply, according to two of the definitions above, “I am the cause of your misfortune” and “I am pitiful.”  That women (culturally supposed to be the authors and menders of relationships) tend to say “I’m sorry” more often than men, is to promote unfortunate gender stereotypes.  "I'm sorry" also is a tacit request for permission or forgiveness.  It is giving our power over to someone else, waiting for them to decide how to proceed.

              So, first and foremost, let’s notice the use of the expression—our own and others.  It’s instructive to actually count them. Next, be clear as to whether it’s either a momentary or significant use, contextually.  If using it to apologize for asserting our place in a conversation—STOP!  Instead of saying, “I’m sorry, but…” let’s use such expressions as “I agree,” “I disagree,” “There are alternate ways to see this.”  If others are monopolizing the airways and not letting you enter the conversation, don’t be the one to apologize for their rudeness.  Let’s get in there by saying, “I have something add,” “Others need a chance to express their views.” (In another blog, we will address how to identify and disrupt people who practice dominance in conversations and how to take our rightful place in the discourse.)

             Are you a compulsive apologizer?  For what, in what contexts, and to whom do you apologize? Tell us a story of how this affects your life.  How are you turning this habit around?  Do you know a compulsive apologizer?  What do you notice?

             Ultimately, let's tell ourselves: Don't apologize! Energize!

      

                                          

Works Cited:

Middle Art: https://memegenerator.net/instance/60348680/crying-woman-234-im-sorry-im-a-woman

End Art: https://medium.com/@tamireiss/just-not-sorry-the-backstory-33f54b30fe48

Classroom Seating: War Zone or Campfire?

            Most classrooms are still organized in military rows of desks riveted toward one focal point at the front of the classroom.  The message is clear: the teacher is the general; the students are the soldiers.  Focus on someone outside of yourself.  Only one face matters.  Lock step. Ten hup (“Attention”). Prepare for The Battle of the Grade.  Comply.  The illusion is that the teacher has more control, thereby.  That she is the performer. The students are the captive audience (captives, indeed). This puts pressure on teacher and students, alike. 

These student desks are, as most military things, of uniform size, as if to say: “To succeed, be like everyone else.  Stay in line. Pull in your arms and legs.”  No matter that students are different sizes, shapes, and handedness.  No matter that evenly spaced desks don’t allow for variations in leg length, cultural sense of social space, redolence of your neighbor: “Shut up and in. Stay put. You are part of a machine. You don’t matter.”

As a teacher, I find the military model intimidating and oppressive. I’m always “on.” The students are pointed at me, like a battery of guns. The military classroom invites students to hide, guerilla style, from me, and to hide behind and from each other.  It allows phone addictions to fester in laps and under pages.  It’s secretive. It’s inhumane and unnatural.  It’s being, literally, boxed in. 

Humans are social creatures.  The most iconic shape religions and businesses use is the circle: it is the sun; it is the campfire around which we gather against the cold and dark.  I’ll never forget how one of my earliest department colleagues sneered at me for putting my students into a circle.  She had a great need to be in charge, she beat her husband, her students hated her, and she didn’t like young upstart professors. Under her red wig, she was a scared novice afraid of change. But I have never abandoned the practice of putting my classes in circles.  And I’m happy that many teachers vary the configuration of desks in their classrooms, too.

Sitting in a circle in a classroom sends the same message as sitting around a campfire.  As the military classroom does, it provides a focal point—but this one is not single-pointed on the teacher—it is shared.  Open spaces in a war zone are dangerous. The space in the center of the circle classroom is our holding, our safe space.  There are many eyes to meet and names to learn. It says Possibility. It says Freedom. It says No one blocks anyone else: We are equally welcome here.  We can see and be seen.  We are social.  We matter.

Once I announce that we will be sitting in a circle, I never have to tell the class again.  When I arrive, sometimes a half hour early to chat with early comers, students have already moved the desks around the periphery of the room.  In classes where I have repeat students, the chairs are already so configured on the first day.  It is meaningful to them.  Except for those who need to not be there, students don’t seek to return to military rows. (As an aside, when students come in late on the first day, their ears all budded in, they will often sit down in the middle of the circle on a stray desk.  Perhaps they enjoy the sacred center. I’m fond of teasing them: “Look around.  What’s happening?”  Oh!)

When we reconfigure for small group work, I first have students stand up.  Otherwise, they prefer to skootch their desks while sitting—“Thigh exercise?” I ask.  Or, “I know you’re old and weak, but…” Finding space away from other groups, they create pods with perfect geometric designs around the front edges of their desks—a triangle for three, a pentagon for five. All equally face a center. For twos, it’s face to face. For fours, it’s a diner table, not a diner booth. 

Yes, my larger desk arrayed with hand-outs, books between book-ends, my singing bowl to bong us in and out (more on that in another post), is still at the front of the class by the board.  But students will often use it for their group work, presentations, enactments.  I freely push it off to the side.  And I walk into the middle of our circle to dance out an iambic pentameter, to actually hand-out hand-outs one at a time, to orchestrate a demonstration by bringing students together in that space.

And if the classroom is small and the registrar has overloaded the course, I push the table away altogether and sit in a classroom desk, myself. That says something, too.

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://www.google.com/search?q=feng+shui+classroom&rlz=1C1JZAP_enUS811US811&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij4tnw4priAhWyd98KHYDrAeUQ_AUIDigB&biw=2048&bih=963#imgrc=sQzePRT5czoJ8M:

Fishing for Knowledge

                                          

           Gulls regurgitate fish into the gullets of their young.  Since they have to transport their catch over distances (during which their killings might be pirated by other birds), this is a crucial survival strategy. For the most part, the fish are not pre-digested, nor are the seeds and other fare birds regurgitate into the mouths of their young.  Granted, this image might be (to use a gustatory word) disgusting in the context of teaching. Let’s work this metaphor.

            According to a proverb variously attributed to Lao Tzu and Maimonides, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for day. Teach a man to fish, and they eat for a lifetime.”  The cover art revises that to a more inclusive gender-neutral aphorism (although it does use the plural “they” as a singular pronoun—more on that in another post). 

            In teaching, there are significant differences between ramming information down others’ throats (thus silencing them and making the material undigestible) and arranging fishing expeditions.  Yes, as a teacher I transport that which might nourish my students across time and space—the works of Plato, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Lao Tzu, Woolf—but to lecture extensively is literally to predigest and regurgitate my point of view into my students.  Then, according to traditional classroom practices, I peck-peck at them with one-answer questions so they can regurgitate what I said into the test booklet.

            More palatable is the image of giving students fishing poles and then sending them out to “catch” what they can on their own.  But if I give them all the same kind of fishing pole and bait, they are likely to return to drop their fishing lines into the same (can’t resist) school of fish and return with either nothing or the same fish over and over.  In classroom terms, this is to assign prompts, which, too often, amount to micromanaging student minds for more efficient assessment. See our link on Prompts, Proctors, Pornography.

            So, there are different fish for different folks. And different fish are caught with different strategies—hooks, various baits, nets, spears, hands, et cetera.  In my classes, this translates into showing students a range of techniques for plumbing Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example.  We will interpret the same passage from a feminist point of view, and then compare that to how the passage would translate from other critical approaches that include Queer Theory, Marxism, Rhetoric, Structuralism, Deconstruction.  Our harvest will vary with how we explore.  Going on fishing expeditions together, we catch more than we could solo.

            Some people prefer to fish in streams with body boots—others drop nets in the ocean. And those who invented fishing poles (which are as vastly different as a string suspended from a stick to a digitally managed mega-reel on a tuna boat) invented them for their particular geography, resources, and needs.  Once we venture into literature with the usual tools, I encourage students to invent new tools that better serve their individual talents and needs.  Do you study the Bible?  Then take a biblical approach to our reading.  Do you love Harry Potter? Then compare one of his ventures to that of Ishmael in Moby Dick.  Are you interested in running for political office?  Cull quotes from Shakespeare’s history plays for your speeches.  In short, create your own fishing gear from the materials in your life.

            And what to do with the fish?  That will determine whether we fish, how, and by what means.  For some, the serenity of sitting in one place with a dropped line, soaking in dawn and stillness is enough.  Sitting with a book in one’s lap in a beach chair can be bliss. For others, the excitement of the hunt is sufficient—once the quarry is caught, it can be tossed back into its waters.  Once the grade is earned, the leased book can be returned to the bookstore.  Chefs plating tuna sushi; sculptors, photographers, poets embodying a rainbow trout; lacrosse players studying the swimming patters of quoi; musicians, caregivers, Uber drivers who listening to audiobooks between fares; trainers dancing with dolphins—so many fish, so many ways to relate with them.

            To teach is not so much to give students the fish, nor to just settle for giving them the equipment to catch them.  Ideally, a teacher helps students to identify their own fish, to create their own harvesting gear, to do fish in their own unique ways.

Works Cited

Cover art: https://heartliving.com/2012/09/22/teach-a-person-to-fish/

Blog Links: Prompts, Proctors, Pornography

A New Day for Clichés

                         

the which, “A New Day,” is a cliché, itself. A cliché is an overused, been-there, done-that, same-old empty expression—even this sentence is filled with them—"been-there,” “done-that,” “same-old”—I could have added other clichés to my descriptors: “shopworn,” “dead metaphor,” “yawns.”  But why bother about them?  (Another cliché.)

            The word cliché is an onomatopoetic reference to the sound made by a stereotyping machine—a printing method that slides a bar back and forth over a paper laid on an inked plate.  Cliché, cliché, cliché. The word “stereotyping,” itself, is a metaphor taken from that process to refer to viewing those who are different from us as if they weren’t unique individuals—same thing, same thing, same thing.  It is a denial of the diversity and changeable nature of life. It inflates our egos at the expense of other human beings. Clichés are an invitation to stop asking questions.  Democracy, humanity, all scientific and creative activities are predicated on asking questions.  Without question, without questions civilization implodes.

            Cliché is defined as any word, phrase, idea, or habit that has lost meaning by careless overuse.  When Shakespeare first coined such phrases as wild goose chase, green-eyed monster,

seen better days, forever and a day, fair play, lie low, and good riddance—they were original and meaningful to his contemporaries.  But most of us in our twenty-first century urban lives never see a goose, even as a Thanksgiving meal, let alone know what a wild goose looks like or what it would mean to chase one.  And how many times have you wished someone to sleep tight?  That expression refers to a time when mattresses were laid atop a series of ropes that were tightened by wooden turners each night.  With our sleep number and digitally managed mattresses, sleep tight no longer makes contemporary sense.

            In stoking stereotypes, prejudices; in shutting down creative and critical thinking; clichés give us a—here comes another cliché—false sense of security—a feeling of certainty, tradition—a common language.  But clichés—like all racial, gender, national, and sexuality stereotyping—are dangerous.  Just because something is familiar and pervasive, doesn’t mean that it means anything, or anything significant.  Consider a slogan created in the 2016 United States presidential election: “Make America Great Again.”  Since it’s been coined (that’s a dead metaphor, too, “coined”—most of our current currency is either paper or digital), this slogan has been slung about to create battle lines between political parties, national regions, and diverse populations within them.  I

            But Make America Great Again, in its divisiveness, is misleading and dangerous.  First, the phrase assumes a particular definition of “great,” a very vague and overinflated (another dead word referring to balloons and tires) term.  Next, it assumes that America has been in—whatever sense you’d like to project—great!  It also assumes that if America was great that somehow it stopped being great.  All of these assumptions are just code for bashing the previous administration and inviting everyone to give into their stereotyping prejudices.

            Clichés provoke school shootings, terrorist attacks, hate crimes, and divert our attention from real issues—such as global warming. So, this business of becoming aware of clichés is not only important, but (another cliché coming) life-and-death crucial.

            I know the temptation, all too well. In my early drafts of my textbook, The Flexible Writer, I incorporated clichés.  Thankfully, my publisher sent out preliminary chapters to professors nationwide, as prospective customers.  I was mortified when they pointed out how many clichés I had used.  I realized that using them was a reflection of my insecurity about writing the book, my need to cozy up to readers, a way to say I’m one of you. Naturally, that was a victim pose, not worthy of someone who was on a mission to help others write authentic, original work.

            So, too, especially as a student writer, you might find yourself using clichés, for a variety of reasons:

(1)   You don’t realize you are

(2)   You’re padding your paper to reach a page quota

(3)   You’re insecure about your writing

(4)   You don’t have the energy to think

(5)   You are hypnotized by clichés

Languages are repositories of history.  As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.”  It’s nearly impossible to write a phrase without invoking some metaphor that someone created afresh eons ago, but that is dead now.  Think of them as being on a continuum—from Almost New to Boring. 

Rule #1 for a writer, especially a student writer, is Don’t Be Boring. Consider clichés in writing to be bookmarks, placeholders, blank spaces (for a cliché is a blank when it comes to thinking) to be revisited—deleted, rethought, revised and re-envisioned. 

Here are some clichés I harvested from a recent set of student papers.  My yuckiest is in today’s society. The word society can apply to as little as keeping society with oneself, to the multi-billion inhabitants of earth.  It can apply to a group of skinheads as well as a gathering of Quakers.  The word is impossibly broad and uninformative.  My second bleh cliché is in fact. The word fact derives from the Latin facio, which means ‘to make.’ One person’s fact is another person’s question. We make them up until the next more compelling point of view emerges. To modify a claim by appending as a matter of fact shuts down thought and invites all the other dangers of clichés.

 Then there are beck and call, has feelings for, putting women down, what stood out to me, has to do with, at first glance, ranting and raving, keeps a close eye on, something to be said for, in a flash of an eye…

Consider clichés to be signals and opportunities to wake up to language. Become a cliché hunter, especially in your own writing.  Consider the expressions in the art at the top of this post.  Go to the internet, type in clichés, and be amazed. Listen to yourself and others. Name that cliché and then ask questions. 

            Name and avoid clichés. Strive for original, thoughtful, vivid language. To do so is a political and moral act of respect—for oneself and for others.  It is a route to authenticity and civility.  Becauseicanteach.blogspot.com is devoted to identifying clichés in education, specifically, and in language, in general.  Are you, as it were, in?

Looking forward to your observations on and examples of clichés.

Works Cited

Cover Art: https://literaryterms.net/cliche/

Shakespeare clichés: http://mentalfloss.com/article/60264/21-phrases-you-use-without-realizing-youre-quoting-shakespeare

Grade Junkie Rehab: Benefit versus Credit

GRADE JUNKIE REHAB

           Student writer Orella Chichester remarked, “I’m tired of writing papers for the way teachers will grade them.”  Another student, Arianne Andrew phrased it as “I’m tired of writing papers so that teachers will have something to grade.”  Yet how many times has a student fairly accosted me terrified that they received an A- instead of an A on an essay?  How many times have you, as a student, focused more on a grade than what you were or could be learning?

           

            Especially in our capitalist economies, grades are money.  Just as payment results in a credit to your bank account, grades are credits in your academic bank account.  Just as you earn money, you earn grades.  Just as money is numerical and digitizable, so, too are grades.  Let us make a distinction, though, between what is a benefit to us and what merely earns us credit. Consider these definitions and word origins:

Benefit: advantage; a gift; a public performance for a charitable cause.  From the Latin ‘to do good’.  Used as “Benefit of clergy,” “Benefit of the doubt,” “For the benefit of the community”

Credit: delay of monetary payment, money submitted, acknowledgment/praise of contribution, belief in.  Used as “credit where credit is due,” “give someone credit for,” “credit for actions.” From the Latin ‘to believe in or to trust.’

            When I was an undergraduate, I went through some difficult semesters—dysfunctional family, relationship crazies, financial challenges.  Instead of reading Poe’s “The Raven,” for my American Literature class, I read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince—a book I needed to shore up my psychic energy and come home to myself.  I walked into the exam for that class, sat down to questions I couldn’t answer, and asked the professor if we could talk outside.  I told him that I was unprepared and that it would be dishonest for me to respond to the exam as if I were.  He thanked me for my frankness, that he was glad that I had read what I needed to read, and said that he would just issue me a “C” for the test.  That was a gift to me, a benefit. That’s the best grade response I’ve ever had—beyond my hundreds of “A’s.”  I was focused on what would benefit me, and not for chasing a grade for credit.  I have and continue to develop a successful career as a professor, writer, and performer—in great part because my professor stepped out the numbers game and acknowledged that I had taken care to read what would benefit me.

            I now say to students “Let what we are doing in this class be so important and beneficial to you that you would accept a 'C,' rather than drop.”  The irony is, of course, that the more we focus on substance, learning, exploration, growing, the more likely we are, in the end, to earn the “A,” but the “A” and the hope of it no longer traps us—so that we can’t wait to graduate;  the “A” no longer holds us in its thrall, and our efforts to rock climb up to them no longer bedevils our lives.

            In our digital age, students are reduced to ID#s, grades, and bursar receipts.  Schools have become factory businesses squeezing students through the process. And how foolish it is that sites such as “Rate My Professor” consider “easiness” to be a good grade.

            To worry about grades and credits is to give our sense of self-respect over to the whims of others—to only believe in ourselves, as the origin of “credit” implies, when someone else “credits”—believes—in us.  It hurts me when I offer an exciting event for us to share as a class--like a play, museum visit, or field trip--and all a student asks is whether it will affect his grade if he skips it.  It hurts me when students ask for extra credit activities, instead of ways to expand their reading, writing, and performing experiences.

            This habit of caring more about credit than benefit is sometimes insidious in my life. Consider the Fitbitch. (Thank you, songwriting friend Morellen MacLeish for so renaming the Fitbit watches we wear). There are times when I lose sight of how the record-keeping it offers becomes more important than the health benefits of, let’s say, my daily physical exercise.  I get stressed out (I admit it), that I haven’t reached my daily quota of steps, or that I’m not reaching my weight goals.  The more I stress, the more onerous the exercise becomes and the more I stuff my face in response.  In short, I give my power of self-respect over to an impersonal, commercial device.  Really?!

            So, I remind myself to focus more on benefit, not credit.  Not how far have I walked, but how does the air feel, have the endorphins kicked in, how many ideas volunteer themselves to me as I swing my arms and legs.  Yes, I’m caught up in the credit mill as much as anyone else, but it no longer makes my life, as the rehab folks would put it, “unmanageable.”

Why am I doing this?  What are the intrinsic, real-life benefits?  This applies, here, too: I wrote this post because loving my students gives my life with meaning and joy.  I wrote this post to commit to living more authentically, myself.

Finally, in school, instead of focusing on credits and grades, ask yourself: “What am I learning?”  “How can I grow?”  “How does this amplify my life and self-respect?”  “How can I benefit in a real, lasting way?”  Ask yourself, following our addict metaphor, “Is this professor nurturing me, or is this professor a pusher?”

What the Heck Kind of Question is That?

             

            A question, by its very nature, invites or assumes responses.  That is why questions are such powerful tools for learning and developing ideas. By asking questions, we enhance the speed, quality, and quantity of our learning.  But not all questions are alike: the better our questions, the better the answers.

            Questions are often triggered by the wh words: who, what when, where, why, and how.  Yes, and how.  Originally, how was spelled and pronounced whow.  Questions can also start with words such as do, can, are, is, were, if, and has, but, as you will soon see, questions triggered by these words do not generate quite the same quality of responses as the wh words do.

            To effectively ask and field questions, let’s distinguish several kinds:

(1) Good questions

                        (2) Key questions

                        (3) Unfair questions

                        (4) Yes/No questions

                        (5) One-answer questions

                        (6) Rhetorical questions

Good Questions

            “Why are our hearts on the left instead of the right side of our human bodies?”  “Why do supermarkets place toothbrushes at adult eye level and not alphabetize soup cans?”  “How do Christians argue for the existence of God?” “Why do some people become alcoholics?” “How can we save the ozone layer?”  “What might cure Alzheimer’s disease?” “What happened to Uncle Frank so that no one in the family talks about him?”  These are examples of good questions.  Students of language notice that good questions tend to

ü  Respond to an important human need

ü  Are focused and specific

ü  Promote thought

ü  May question popular beliefs

ü  Invite multiple, often conflicting answers

ü  Lead to other questions

ü  Suggest how they might be answered

ü  Lead to good answers

ü  Elicit an aha response

ü  May cause strong emotional responses

ü  May meet with resistance

ü  Can lead to collaborative work for answers

ü  Make us respond with “That’s a good question!”

            For example the question “How might we preserve the ozone layer?” is a good question because it responds to an important human need—to health of planet earth.  The question makes us think, has more than one answer, and leads to other questions about the environment.  The question has led to good answers by people who have collaboratively pursued answers to the question.  It isn’t a trick or unfair question.  It leads people to say, That’s a good question. Whether in a classroom, lab, conference room, assembly, or family table, good questions generate lively discussions and promote inspiring challenges.

Key Questions

            The key question driving this post is “What the heck kind of question is that?”  If we were to formulate key questions for the Bible or the Koran, they might be “Who is God?” and “How can we best serve God?”  Whether or not questions are explicitly posed by an author, as readers, formulating key questions for the text will help us to read more deeply.  For the most effective texts, the key questions are the good questions.  When the good question is not explicitly posed, here are some ways to formulate them for what we read:

ü  Posit a point of view of the author

ü  Identify a purpose for why the author might be writing

ü  Choose what seems to be an important purpose

ü  Formulate this purpose as a wh question

            As a writer, articulate your own sense of why you are writing a particular piece. Ask yourself these questions:

ü  Why am I writing this?

ü  What do I hope to discover in my writing process?

ü  Who am I addressing as my ideal reader?

I find that whenever I am at a stopping point in a particular piece of writing,

I turn my most recent sentence into a question to relaunch my flow.  So, for example, I

will turn my previous sentence into a question:  “If I come to a stopping point in a particular piece of writing, how might I relaunch my flow?”

Unfair Questions

            “Are you still beating your dog?” “What’s the difference between a duck?” “How come someone says they saw you did it?” “You don’t want another piece of my pie, do you?” “What is it like to be blown up by a bomb?”  These and other such questions are unfair because they

ü  Assume something illegitimately

ü  Are meant to trick responders

ü  Often exact only one answer

ü  May be unanswerable

ü  Antagonize and confront

ü  Lead or manipulate

          For example, the question “Are you still beating your dog?” is unfair because

it assumes that you beat your dog in the first place.  You can’t win.  If you say “Yes,” then you are admit to beating your dog.  If you say, “No,” then you still admit to having beaten your dog.  The question is confrontational and antagonistic.  In a

court of law, the opposing counsel would object that it is a “leading question.” A fairer

approach would be to first ask, “Have you ever beaten your dog?” 

            In an earlier blog, “Martha and Mary,” I had originally asked an unfair question:

“How are your teachers more Martha than Mary?”  That assumed that your teachers were more Martha and Mary.  When a responder pointed out it was a leading question, I revised it to “Are your teachers more Martha or Mary?”  

 

            Some questions might be unfair because of the context in which they are asked.

For example, it could be unfair and embarrassing to ask a person, “Is that a new hair dye?” at a formal dinner.  But it can be entirely appropriate for a hairdresser to ask this question of a client in the salon. 

            How you phrase a question is crucial.  The question “What happened to

Uncle Frank?” may be a good question, whereas “What did you do to Uncle Frank?”

is not.  The question “What’s the difference between a duck?” is nonsensical.  But when comedian Grouch Marx asks it, the question isn’t unfair—it’s funny.

Yes/No Questions

            “Is there an afterlife?” “Have you gone to the store?” “Are there moons around

Jupiter?” “Will there be enough ozone layer left at the end of the twenty-first century?” “Should there be an extra microphone for the event?” “Can you loan me some money?”  Such questions are yes/no questions because they invite just that—yes or no.  They

ü  Begin with some form of the words is, can, do, has, could/would/should,

or will

ü  Do not invite discussion or collaboration

ü  Limit the range of acceptable responses

ü  May be too general

ü  Can be unfair, given the context

One-Answer Questions

            “How much is 2 + 2 in the decimal system?” “What was the cause of the Civil

in America?” “Who is the main character in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?” “What

is the most important trait of a responsible thinker?” “Would any sane person ever

want to kill an innocent child?”  Or, my favorite question to avoid asking students: “What is the main point of this text?” Such one-answer questions

ü  Assume there is only one right answer

ü  Occur most often in courses focused on information, not thinking

ü  Create a guessing-game atmosphere

ü  Can be satisfying to answer “right,” embarrassing to answer “wrong”

ü  May create corrosive competition

ü  May preclude questioning the question’s validity

            For example, the question “What as the cause of the Civil War in America?” assumes, by the use of the word the, that there was one and only one cause of the war.  Similarly,  the question “What is the main point?” may shut down creative and critical thinking. If the questions were posed by a teacher in a class, it could create a “guess what the teacher’s thinking” game. Some students would settle for guessing, others might compete to be the first to say.  Students who don’t want to play, might give up, feel defeated, retreat into boredom, and sneak their phones.

Rhetorical Questions

     “Would you starve the children?” “How many people lost their lives to overdose?” “What more could we have done to save them?”  Sometimes answers to such questions are meant to be so obvious—No, countless, nothing (respectively)—that the questions are not meant to be answered.  They assume a particular answer and are used to affirm agreement.

            If a question is not a request for an answer but a strategy to persuade an audience of a predictable answer and point, it is called a rhetorical question (as the word rhetorical means “meant to persuade”). Rhetorical questions

ü  State, don’t ask

ü  Are often used in rousing speeches and texts

ü  Are meant to impress

ü  Make a point without stating it

ü  Imply one acceptable answer

ü  Preclude an answer

ü  Manipulate

            Notice that context—purpose and audience—determines whether a question is rhetorical.  A villain might ask “Would you starve the children?” as a request for an accomplice to do so.  A writer seeking statistics to support an argument for research on drug-use is not merely posing a bemoaning rhetorical question when asking “How many have died in this epidemic?” A Red Cross volunteer asking, “What more could we have done to save them?” is posing a good question, not merely a rhetorical one.

Explore Questions

            In your classes, notice what kinds of questions are favored in class, and in assessment instruments such as essays and tests.  Learn to discern what the heck kinds of questions your teachers are asking and, if they are not asking good questions, how you might turn discussions to asking them, yourself.  Here are some procedures you might take:

1.     Remind yourself: The only dumb question is the one not asked.

2.     Use the wh words: Who, What, When, Where, Why, (W)how

3.     Analyze select questions by asking

a.      What the heck kind of question is this? Good, key, unfair,

            yes/no, one-answer, rhetorical, undetermined?

b.     What kind of response does this question anticipate?

c.      How could I revise this question into a good question?

4.     Formulate key questions for authors and in your own writing

5.     Practice answering anticipated questions

6.     Ask questions throughout your learning and writing process

7.     Repeat for questions in other important areas of your life: family, relationships, financial, spiritual, professional, et al.

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://www.conduiraonline.com/index.php/detail/990-hr-interviews-in-campus-placements-all-the-answers-that-you-wish-you-know