If the textbook contains the answers, then what are the questions?

The questions ARE the questions because good, relevant questions point us in new directions and they enable us to use knowledge in new meaningful ways. When students are actively questioning, you know that you are reaching them.

Imagine a job interview. A boss who is interviewing a potential employee asks questions for the sole purpose of understanding what the person knows and whether they would be a good fit for the job. They ask them questions to probe their thinking, to get a sense of their experiences, and to find out more about their personality and preferences.

Teachers ask questions to find out the same things about their students. In both cases if the answers lack depth, the boss and the teacher know that the applicant and the students are not really connecting to the information. The difference is the boss wants to hire the best employee for the job and the teacher needs to do a better job at making the learning relevant to the students’ interests and lives.

We have to teach students to question the relevance so they can take responsibility for their education. So when I think about, “If the textbooks contains the answers what are the questions?” I think that the answer to this question is it depends on the student. When we hear students asking good questions, it sounds like:

What does this mean?
Why should I care about this?
What does this have to do with my life and me?
Why are we learning this?
What does this have to do with anything?

The teacher needs to help the student answer these questions on his or her own. They do this by creating learning situations where students relate the content to what they care about. If the students are too young to ask these questions, we need to ask these questions FOR THEM and model how to take responsibility for our own learning by making personal connections to the content.

The answers to these very important questions are NOT in the textbook. They can be found in the ways students connect what they learn to their lives and the ways they use the information. Relevance is the most important thing we can teach our students.