Begging the Question, Choking the Question and Opening the Question

In the best possible English class, the students ask all of the questions. Teachers are so accustomed to asking the important questions that it is easy to overlook this fact, if not reject it out of hand. Obviously, in order to figure out what students know, we have to ask them about it. Perhaps, but let’s remember the kinds of questions we ask as teachers, namely, questions we already know the answer to. Because if we don’t know the answer, how can we possibly tell if the students got it right?

They say that a good lawyer never asks a question to which she doesn’t already know the answer. The same is true of Socrates himself, and characterizes his method. And far be it of me to discount law and philosophy, because there is certainly much that the English teacher can learn from jurists and goatishly ugly philosophers. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind why lawyers and philosophers ask the questions they ask, and then consider when their purposes apply to the English classroom.
In the end, a good lawyer and Socrates both have a similar reason for asking the questions they ask. That purpose is to ensnare their interlocutors in an inescapable web of truth. Answer by answer, the witness plays into the hands of the lawyer, until the lawyer’s conclusion is proven in the witness’s words. Socrates was much the same, ruthlessly sharpening his point against his opponent’s dull answers. However, neither Socrates nor a lawyer asks questions in order to teach something to the person answering them.

A lawyer, after all, is not asking a question in the sense of inquiring about something she does not know. And Socrates would never let his predestined train of thought be derailed by an iota of uncertainty. But questions that are not really questions are dialogue—lines in a script—and both questions and answers are just part of the scene. In the lawyer’s case, the performance is entirely staged for the jury. A lawyer would no more ask the witness a real question than Shakespeare would let some boy in a dress ad-lib Juliet. As for Socrates, he performed for Plato a long time ago and it’s been a hit in the history of philosophy ever since. So to the extent that a two-period ELA block is a ninety-minute performance, we have a lot to learn from the Socratic method of mock-questioning.

But it is also fair to note that lawyers are trying to get convictions or acquittals, and Socrates was interested in eternal verities. These are noble aims in any classroom, but even truth is not the primary mission of Language Arts. What is our mission? I wish I already knew the answer to that question. I will, however, hazard a guess:

We should be teaching students how to ask us the kinds of questions we are asking them. The exact same question is entirely different when it comes from a student. One difference is that when a student asks a question, it’s a real question about something they honestly want to learn. Also, in the end, it provides a better assessment of what our students have actually learned. It is possible to get so good at posing leading questions that students just follow the trail of breadcrumbs into the teacher’s trap. Following a trail of crumbs, however, shows no critical thought and minimal content knowledge. But asking good questions about a text? That’s a demonstration of critical perspective and academic knowledge, and it is the best proof of a good English education.

If you already know the answer, the purpose of asking a question cannot be to get an answer. The purpose of such questions is to help students become questing intellects themselves. Literacy is citizenship, and literature is dead, so every question must be turned on its head.

--H. Scutt