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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 18, 2002
Latest Update: November 18, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Dumb Questions and Projecting a Professional Image

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Only here in the depths of the site will Susan and Pat and jeanne cop to asking dumb questions. Unfortunately, it's so easy to do that even we do it now and then. First let's try to be sure that we're all on the same page with this. We're calling questions dumb when they offer no entry into substantive dialogue, when they ask another to do the thinking for you, when they don't reflect a real issue to which you would appreciate an answer, and so are willing to listen the person when they respond. In other words, dumb questions, for us, are questions that don't contribute towards meaningful communication. And Susan and I asked some in Chicago this week.

Now, we had a good excuse. Those of you who joined us in our Saturday session were very very quiet, we were all very, very tired, and jeanne found herself lecturing. You all smiled sweetly and looked attentive, for which I thank you. But then over lunch, Susan and I kept asking each other, why were they so quiet? Dumb question.

You guys are always afraid to ask a dumb question. Give it up. Parents, teachers, professionals have such an edge on dumb questions, you'll never catch up. Pat and I audibly winced on Friday at the Chicago Art Institute when a mother cooed to her toddler as they headed for the coat check room: "Now, what did you learn today?" In chorus we yelped "I don't know," and "nothing." and prayed for the future sanity of the child.

And then we saw the parallel to our own insecurities as Susan and Gail and Pat and I worried that the UWP students on Thursday had lots to say, while the group on Saturday was so quiet. Well, of course, on Saturday, the rooms were all screwed up so we had to move about, some of the professionals were arrogant as puffed up bullfrogs, especially considering that we had lots more people than they did and equal entitlement to the contested room (but one group was nice enough to offer to exchange with us), the lighting was awful in the closet we commandeered, and the chairs, those wonderful chairs were comfortable enough to go to sleep in, which some of us promptly tried to do. No wonder we behaved differently. It's called the "definition of the situation" in symbolic interactionism. And Howard Blumer would say that the individual selves we insert into the situation, together with all the objects, like big old comfortable chairs, would have a lot to do with constituting the salient transactions.

The worst dumb question in my memory was asked by a graduate student at USC in the seventies, purportedly as research for her doctorate. She asked every graduate student she knew (terrible snowball sample technique, by the way) to answer a question, in writing: "What does your Ph.D. mean to you?" I know it was cattty, but I answered in one word, MONEY. And I was angry, justifiably so, I thought. If she wanted to investigate the meaning of a doctorate, she should have read the literature in the field, figured out what she was looking for, and then asked (orally, I didn't need to write another term paper) pointed questions that would help her clarify her ideas. Her question left all that work up to me, and I wasn't willing to do it. My Ph.D. was essential to my career. Without a career, no job. Without a job, no money. Therefore, my Ph.D. meant money to me.

This is a good example of what's wrong with "questioning" period. You can ask questions, get answers, and still be no nearer any real and useful information. Tis far far better to watch and listen in good faith, and then to ask specific questions that may clarify what you've learned from your grounded approach. (By grounded approach we mean that you observe and listen in good faith in a setting typical of the situation you wish to study, and from that initial grounding you begin to sketch out a theory, instead of making up a theory based on what you or others expect to find, and then asking the questions that will substantiate what you already suspect.) Humans have a wonderful ability to communicate with symbols, but we're often not on the same page with those symbols. We often assume that we know more than we do. Herbert Blumer accents this approach by always reminding us that sociology is interpretive. Others, like Kuhn, insist that we are stably constrained by our socially constructed environment, so that they may approach us as though the infrastructure actually controls to some extent. I disagree with Kuhn, and support Blumer's interpretive approach that says that individuals create the structures within which they find themselves. You should simply be aware that us sociologists disagree with each other on lots of stuff like that.

The other dumb question that brought this file into existence was that overenthusiastic mother at the Chicago Art Institute who asked her poor child what it had learned. To some extent Pat and I responded out of pedagogical theory which relies, like Blumer's approach on interdependent interpretations. To assume that a museum is a place in which to learn and that your child will learn there is to take an approach much more like Kuhn's. It is to believe that learning is something we are expected to do, and will do to please those who have authority over us. I don't believe that. Pat doesn't believe that. And if I interpret him correctly, Freire didn't believe that. We believe that learning is something spontaneous and interactive, something performative that requires objects included in our definition of the situation, such objects including our selves and other objects, and that learning takes place when those objects in our space interact with one another interdependently and so define a new situation, out of which learning grows. The child is active in this process and contributes as much to it as it takes from it. The museum is active in this process. So is the parent who was with the child. But asking "What did you learn?" reduces that whole magical process of performative interaction with sculpture and paintings and people into a thing, a concept, that we can hold up and say "I learned THIS." Shades of behavioral objectives, after which, we forget to look in the eyes of the child and see the magic taking place.

If you've ever been lucky enough to enter the magic castle of someone's apperceptive mass, and share some of the learning that has mattered so much to them, you'll know that some magical experiences can't be caught in those behavioral objectives without losing altogether their magic and their infinite complexity. "What did you learn?" is a dumb question when it assumes that you can pull out a piece of learning and hold it up and let others look at it to praise you. That's not what learning's for.

So now you see who gets the prize for dumb questions this semester. jeanne. I've been insisting all semester that you should share with us your learning. Tell us what you've learned. Oh, shame! Oh, horror! No wonder you had trouble with the concept. I didn't mean a behavioral objective. I meant the magic of learning something. And there are so many magical learning experiences across a semester that you must choose your own. But tell us, please, about the magic. Don't list six words you can define, or six kinds of art you can recognize, or ten definitions of denial.

And together at lunch on Saturday, Susan and I lamented that we had done "something wrong" because the students were so quiet. If we did something wrong, so be it. We won't be he first to make a mistake, and it certainly won't be our first mistake. But I think we just got hoisted on our petard with that "Why won't they talk?" Let's retreat a little to Blumer's definition of the situation. And let's compare it to similar scenes back at CSUDH. Who talks is who finds something to say in the situation as presently defined. I, for one, had an enormous amount to say. I was bursting with issues of denial, of caring, of meaningful change in communities apart from schools. Most of you would have needed an enormous amount of energy and a topic you had your teeth into to overcome the energy I was emitting. At CSUDH when that happens, I get to talk. But the students get to listen, and they get to comment, and they get to see the issue from lots of different perspectives, and we both get to look in each others' eyes for the magic, and it's the magic that counts.

I suspect that we are going to find out that to the extent that we can make higher education a performative act, sometimes the teacher will be the actor and the students the audience, and sometimes it will be the other way round. But in dialogue in academic discourse who shouldn't matter who speaks next, or even who speaks under the weird conditions of our commandeered closet. We don't want to regulate and ritualize our scripts to that extent. Who should speak is who has something to say at that moment. In the beginning, as we learn the process, that's more likely to be me than you. But I've found that very quickly I can't get a word in. That's performance.

And one last thing I need to tell you about this tonight is that some of us are quieter than others. Some of us just can't shut up. But others express their feelings by body posture, facial expression, almost inaudible comments, and, yes, in one documents CSUDH case, chewing her fingernails down to the quick. Wow, I got that message. But I wish I had picked it up before it went that far. So. Susan, they were quiet Saturday, at least most of them were. But quiet's OK. And many of them will find ways to tell you what they learned, without the ritual, without the rigidity, and let the magic show through.

Kids, Susan will feel better if you talk to her. After all, I'm only the teacher, and she knows she doesn't have to listen to me.

love and peace,
and we probably need to talk a lot about this.