Austin Scholar #87: The importance of asking good questions
& a high schooler's guide to asking good questions
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: The importance of asking good questions
A high schooler's guide to asking good questions
Scholar’s Sources: Interesting things I’ve read this week
Big news: I’ve applied to college!!
I submitted my application to UK schools last week, and just yesterday I sent in my Stanford application. I am, of course, still working on my regular decision applications, but this last week has relieved so much stress.
I’m excited to keep you updated on how everything goes.
Austin’s Anecdote: The importance of asking good questions
Asking good questions is one of the most important skills you can teach your high schooler. But most high schoolers aren't very good at it. Let me give you an example.
Earlier this week, the Alpha High guides presented us with some changes that are being made at school. (It's a startup school, so changes are a common occurrence.) It was a twenty-minute presentation, but it dragged on for an hour.
Why? The students kept asking questions.
And not super smart questions.
Questions that had been answered already. Questions about scenarios that were obscure edge cases and would never actually happen. Questions that literally had their answer on the slide right in front of us.
And so, we all wasted an hour of our time listening to repetitive information and ridiculous situations.
This entire scenario gave me deja-vu of a similar day a few years ago that completely changed my perspective on asking questions.
When I was in eighth grade–before the COVID lockdown–the head of school at the time sat down with all of the students to explain the changes that were going to be put in place that year.
He talked about the requirements to get into high school, and new expectations for using the apps. You know, the really important stuff. And then he made a grievous error. He mentioned that next session, Alpha might implement a house system – just like Harry Potter.
And my goodness, did that open the floodgates. Every single hand went up.
A house system? Like Harry Potter? How many houses would there be? Would there be house captains? How would houses be chosen? What would they be called? Wait, the house system is like Harry Potter?
There were a seemingly infinite number of questions about trivial, completely irrelevant things. But our young brains were stuck on the idea we found most interesting in the discussion: the houses.
A few parents also listened in to this talk, and let me tell you: they were not impressed with our thinking abilities.
Every adult walked away from that discussion wondering if these kids were actually intelligent. How can online apps teach kids reading comprehension and critical thinking skills if they can’t comprehend the (very clear) main idea of a presentation?
Honestly, that’s when it clicked for me – you can tell a lot about a person based on the questions they ask. And we make snap judgments based on the competence level of someone’s questions.
Questions are so much more important than I had ever thought they were, but basically no kid learns how to ask them.
So, here’s my guide for how to ask good questions (that will make you seem impressive):
A high schooler's guide to asking good questions
There are two levels to question asking: one, making sure you aren't asking "stupid" questions; and two, learning how to ask really good ones.
We'll talk about avoiding asking unhelpful questions first.
There are a few immediate checks kids can make to ensure their questions should be asked in a group setting:
Does this question only apply to me?
Is this scenario extremely unlikely to occur?
Has this question been answered already and I just don’t remember what the answer was?
Is it probable my question will be answered before the end of the discussion?
If any of these are answered with a “yes”, you should probably find a different time to ask your question. For example:
Ask the instructor or speaker in a one-on-one setting.
Only ask the question if it becomes more likely or relevant.
Try asking one of your peers or wait to see if they remember the answer, or simply wait until after to ask your question one-on-one.
Wait to ask your question until the end.
If you follow these rules, you’ll most likely be able to escape asking a “stupid” question. But what if you want to ask a good question? Well, let’s start by defining what a good question is, beyond just one that makes you sound impressive.
Here are three defining characteristics of a good question: