An excerpt from an important book:
“We have framed some questions which, in our judgment, are responsive to the actual and immediate as against the fancied and future needs of learners in the world as it is (not as it was):
What do you worry about most? What are the causes of your worries? Can any of your worries be eliminated? How? Which of them might you deal with first? How do you decide? Are there other people with the same problems? How do you know? How can you find out? If you had an important idea that you wanted to let everyone (in the world) know about, how might you go about letting them know?
What bothers you most about adults? Why? How do you want to be similar to or different from adults you know when you become an adult?
What, if anything, seems to you to be worth dying for? How did you come to believe this? What seems worth living for? How did you come to believe this? At the present moment, what would you most like to be—or be able to do? Why? What would you have to know in order to be able to do it? What would you have to do in order to get to know it?
How can you tell “good guys” from “bad guys”? How can “good” be distinguished from “evil”?
What kind of a person would you most like to be? How might you get to be this kind of person? At the present moment, what would you most rather be doing? Five years from now? Ten years from now? Why? What might you have to do to realize these hopes? What might you have to give up in order to do some or all of these things?
When you hear or read or observe something, how do you know what it means? Where do words come from? Where do symbols come from? Why do symbols change? Where does knowledge come from? What do you think are some of man’s most important ideas? Where did they come from? Why? How? Now what? What’s a “good idea”? How do you know when a good or live idea becomes a bad or dead idea? Which of man’s ideas would we be better off forgetting? How do you decide?
What is “progress”? What is “change”? What are the most obvious causes of change? What are the least apparent? What conditions are necessary in order for change to occur? What kinds of changes are going on right now? Which are important? How are they similar to or different from other changes that have occurred? What are the relationships between new ideas and change? Where do new ideas come from? How come? So what?
If you wanted to stop one of the changes going on now (pick one), how would you go about it? What consequences would you have to consider? Of the important changes going on in our society, which should be encouraged and which resisted? Why? How? What are the most important changes that have occurred in the past ten years? twenty years? fifty years? In the last year? In the last six months? Last month? What will be the most important changes next month? Next year? Next decade? How can you tell? So what? What would you change if you could? How might you go about it? Of those changes which are going to occur, which would you stop if you could? Why? How? So what?
Who do you think has the most important things to say today? To whom? How? Why? What are the dumbest and most dangerous ideas that are popular today? Why do you think so? Where did these ideas come from?
What are the conditions necessary for life to survive? Plants? Animals? Humans? Which of these conditions are necessary for all life? Which ones for plants? Which ones for animals? Which ones for humans? What are the greatest threats to all forms of life? To plants? To animals? To humans? What are some of the “strategies” living things use to survive? Which unique to plants? Which unique to animals? Which unique to humans? What kinds of human survival strategies are (1) similar to those of animals and plants; (2) different from animals and plants? What does man’s language permit him to develop as survival strategies that animals cannot develop? How might man’s survival activities be different from what they are if he did not have language?
What other “languages” does man have besides those consisting of words? What functions do these “languages” serve? Why and how do they originate? Can you invent a new one? How might you start?
What would happen, what difference would it make, what would man not be able to do if he had no number (mathematical) languages? How many symbol systems does man have? How come? So what? What are some good symbols? Some bad? What good symbols could we use that we do not have? What bad symbols do we have that we’d be better off without?
What’s worth knowing? How do you decide? What are some ways to go about getting to know what’s worth knowing?
“It is necessary for us to say at once that these questions are not intended to present a catechism for the new education. These are samples and illustrations of the kinds of questions we think worth answering. Our set of questions is best regarded as a metaphor of our sense of relevance. If you took the trouble to list your own questions, it is quite possible that you prefer many of them to ours. Good enough. The new education is a process and will not suffer from the applied imaginations of all who wish to be a part of it. But in evaluating your own questions, as well as ours, bear in mind that there are certain standards that must be used. These standards may also be stated in the form of questions:
- Will your questions increase the learner’s will as well as his capacity to learn?
- Will they help to give him a sense of joy in learning?
- Will they help to provide the learner with confidence in his ability to learn? In order to get answers, will the learner be required to make inquiries? (Ask further questions, clarify terms, make observations, classify data, etc.?)
- Does each question allow for alternative answers (which implies alternative modes of inquiry)?
- Will the process of answering the questions tend to stress the uniqueness of the learner?
- Would the questions produce different answers if asked at different stages of the learner’s development?
- Will the answers help the learner to sense and understand the universals in the human condition and so enhance his ability to draw closer to other people?
This important book? Teaching as a Subversive Activity.
Published in 1969 – and worth reading in 2015. Especially in 2015.
19 Responses
There was so much going on in the 1960’s regarding education and so much has been forgotten, ignored or trivialised. My math teacher was Alan Tammage, part author and leading light for the “School Mathematics Project” , the first of the so-called “New math” programs. Abandoned, gone, forgotten. they tried again in the 80’s with the National Curriculum. Gone, forgotten, all at the hands of the “back to basics” brigade. I see the Common Core math going the same way. Ah, well.
As I was reading the questions I was thinking, “Conservatives would not like this… subversive…causes children to think too much…”
I wonder if private education will be the only sphere for this kind of reformed and truly progressive education. I can’t imagine tax payers allowing this kind of discourse…
How do we address these kinds of questions in an educational setting, at the same time within a context of “goodness” or a shared moral compass? Some of the answers could easily go a different way if not within a moral frame…but whose moral frame?
Maybe the answer is that we develop thinkers, problem solvers, and evidence finders and scrutinizers within a collaborative/ cooperative setting in the elementary and secondary settings. Then these big essential questions could rest at the collegiate level on the foundational of dispositions and skills developed in earlier school experiences. Can you imagine what it would look like if every category of higher education posed these ethical questions within their own domain? Now that might change things for the better!
Thanks, Grant, for your post. I have owned a copy of Teaching as a Subversive Activity since 1972. I’ve wondered for awhile if I was alone in my respect of its positions. Along with Hooked on Books (Fader and McNeil), Experience and Education (Dewey), Journey of a Teacher (Ayers) and your book, UBD, I had all I needed to teach and to help others teach. Retired now, but still influencing others, subversively.
I was not aware of that. Of course I will buy the book, (though I’m well past teaching age these days). And I will send the link to the book to the teachers and home-schooling mothers I know would appreciate it. Like Lorraine, I am “Retired now, but still influencing others, subversively”. But “teaching subversively” certainly doesn’t mean denying an author his royalties.
Thank you for citing one of the most important and impactful books about teaching – still so relevant after over 40 years.
Definitely worth reading!
Here is a link to a free PDF of the book:
http://ir.nmu.org.ua/bitstream/handle/123456789/129284/2acc6cf8d29603bd81ba8253a752e03b.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
A free PDF! Wow! I will pass the link to that as well as the link to this post to a lot of teachers and parents I know. I taught for many years, and in many different situations, from inner city schools, prisons, First Nations and more, and that book taught me far more than any of my textbooks. It’s just as relevant now as it was then and in every sort of teaching position. My thanks to you and to Grant Wiggins.
The pdf violates intellectual copyright – I would encourage you to buy the book which is very cheap.
Questions like these are why i began teaching…
I am so wholly in favor of the use of essential questions, your rationale for creating our own, and the list of thought provoking examples you provided. I only wish the language you chose to use in scripting some of them reflected your guiding philosophy. Surely in the 21st century we can all consistently use the word human, instead of man?
The list is 45 years old, from the authors of the book, verbatim. But your concern could easily be a new question, couldn’t it?
It absolutely could be! Thanks for the reply.
Great post. It says it all.
Good questions disrupt life. I find them the only way to awaken the spirit of teenagers. This is exactly why philosophy should be taught everywhere. If you want kids asking kids these kinds of questions, expose them to philosophy as soon as possible.
excellent is inadequate to express such “goodness”
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Reblogged this on The Great Equalizer.
Thanks for this post. It brings back memories. I read this book back when I was in high school in the 1980s and it was one of the things that prodded me to take philosophy at University. Eventually I became a philosophy Professor because I discovered a career where I actually got paid to attempt to answer these questions and to get students excited about them!
This is one of my favorite books to return to when I start feeling like the EQs (and subsequent learning events) I develop for K-12 students are too “out there”. It is a good reminder that good questions for students also happen to be good questions for life.
I love Postman! Thanks for this, Grant.
Gracias!!! Amazing that it is from ’69. This makes sense to me. What we are doing now does not. We are at a terrible place right now with the super high standards that expect every child to be an author, an engineer or a doctor. I asked a group of 8th graders back in 2007, what did that mean. What does it mean that this is the year 2007? They had no idea. It was just a number!!!! If you don’t know that in 8th grade schooling has failed you. I have to get this book!!! Thank you!!!