Can I ask you a question?
I love questions but that one sounds a little funny.
No, you can’t but you just did so—yes.
I joke but questions are important and sometimes people don’t always feel welcome to ask them. This is the 2nd in a 3 part series on asking questions.
Facing the students the teacher does stand,
The student facing the front raises her hand,
The answer not known, the teacher must learn,
To the front of the classroom she too does turn,
In humility she does lead learning’s way,
By heading into the unknown path and the fray,
Let us search out together the why,
From the dark unknown let us not shy,
The classroom now in shadow does fade,
“Further up and further in!’ she does bade.”
Some act as though questions about faith equal doubt at best or hearsay at the worst. I discussed the “at worst” part in my last post: Here I believe that asking questions is necessary part of all learning. There is a philosophy of education, called Classical Education, that suggestions there are three stages of all learning.
The first stage is the Who, What, When, Where Stage. It is the stage of basic facts and rules. It is the memorization stage. Small children are often very good with this stage and can learn all manner of facts without understanding the information they are reciting. This early stage of acquiring facts is typically called the Grammar Stage.
When I first learned how to play chess, I was able to quickly learn all the pieces and their moves. Yet I didn’t know how to play the pieces together with any kind of strategy.
The 2nd stage of learning is the Why Stage. It is when the person begins to put things together, make connections between the facts, and challenge. Ever been around a preteen or teen who starts to argue with you about everything? That’s this stage. As even as an adult when we are presented to new information we do tend to ask question details fit the new information with what we already know. This is called the Dialectic stage. This stage is when you are synthesizing what you know. You see two facts and understand why they fit. No longer is it good enough to know both facts, but now you question WHY are these to facts able to both be true.
At some point I looked at the chess board and instead of seeing individual pieces I saw that each piece depended on the others. I realized needed to use there individual traits together in order to win.
The last stage of learning is the HOW? It’s the put it into practice stage. It’s when a person can teach it, explain it or do it. It’s when you have made a recipe so many times you know how to change it when you don’t have all the ingredients, it is knowing how to play a game so well you can strategize, it’s the you know it so well you can use it to create something new. This stage is the Rhetorical stage. It’s the sage of learning that we all want to get to when we start out. It is when the learning of something finally gets to be fun because you can really do it! Before you were just practicing for the race, now you get to race.
As far as chess goes, I really haven’t ever gotten to this place. I of course can explain the rules and I can play and still have fun, but far less experienced players are able to beat me.
Do you see the pattern Knowledge, Understanding then Wisdom? You can’t start with basic knowledge and skip right to wisdom, there HAS to be a place for gaining understanding and questioning the WHY? Push the limits—playing chess? Loose a few key pieces and lose the game; Cooking a recipe—add a new ingredient—and it tastes terrible. You’re a kid questioning rules—its possible you break a few – and get yourself in a great deal of trouble. There is just no replacement for this important stage. And its no good staying in the first one forever.
In the context of religion, what kind of faith is that? In the context of any human being, what kind of adult is that?
I picture it like this. Say you had to repel off a cliff. It doesn’t matter if you are afraid of heights or not; you probably are going to check all the straps and all the gear. You must make sure it is strong and secure and make sure it isn’t going to slip or snap or break.
Does this mean you doubt? It might, it might also be an important part of checking the gear.
If you are the teacher being asked all the difficult questions it might be little uncomfortable. However, maybe the student is just testing the gear. Asking questions is a vital part of learning anything and it is a vital part of growth spiritually. Without it, we are stuck back in the first stage with a lot of knowledge that we really won’t know how to use, or how to apply it.
This Philosophy of Learning or Education may help explain human learning, but it does not inform on a topic, it only gives us a frame work for learning about that topic. In order to learn about theological questions we will need to look at Spiritual texts on faith and God. In my next post I will discuss this topic from a few passages from the Bible.
“Further up and Further in” is a reference from C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle.
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