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BUENOS AIRES — A symbol of the Enlightenment, the encyclopedia, as a literary genre, had the express purpose of collecting, compiling and disseminating all the knowledge in the world. To that end, the Encyclopedia Britannica was published in Edinburgh in 1768. Its final edition in paper format was published in 2010.
The inability to collect information in real time, the time wasted in obtaining the necessary answers, and the inconvenience of its volumes made the encyclopedia obsolete.
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Today, all the information in the world fits on a smartphone. The speed of its output —together with free, fast and unrestricted access — has transformed information into an abundant commodity. And what is abundant is not valued. This accessibility is not consistent with the meaningful processing involved in the act of learning.
Knowledge occurs when students grasp the essential characteristics of the subject being studied and are able to transfer them to different situations in their lives. Copying and pasting information is not learning.
Important questions
In this situation, the question must be valued as the right strategy for the critical handling of information. The question must come from the student.
The student is not an isolated entity: they have their own history, emotions, feelings, interests and concerns. The question must be formulated based on the student’s own circumstances, so that the act of learning does not remain in the idealization of neutral knowledge. It is the curiosity about the answer that prompts the question.
The question should not be innocent
The question must demand an explanation. It is necessary to teach students to formulate questions that dismantle automatic responses. Questions that seek the foundations of the object of study and, therefore, allow for its understanding. The question should not be innocent; it should be bold and provocative, challenging what is taken for granted. It is the question that arouses interest in the answer.
Place of reflection
A question must allow for possibilities. In the answer to a question lies the potential for another answer, and this is what the student must consider. The question must be aimed at opening up what is presented to us as closed and, from there, exploring all possible answers. The question is what encourages debate around the answer.
Questions should allow for reflection. Given the maelstrom of information, questions should allow time to work on the answer, so that students can think about it and, based on that, reformulate the question. It is questions that allow for reflection on the answer.
Everything that middle and high school students learn today will be irrelevant in 10 years. The key is to teach the critical use of information, not to synthesize or memorize it. We should not strive for more content, but rather for a better approach to utilizing it. Teaching how to ask questions is one of the strategies to which schools should direct their efforts.
