The Sabbath School by Erwin House

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 9, 1880

The Sabbath School.

By Erwin House

THE ART OF QUESTIONING.

FIRST, cultivate great simplicity of language. Use as few words as possible, and let them be such as are adapted to the age and capacity of the class you are teaching. It is a great point in questioning to say as little as possible; and so to say that little, as to cause the children to say as much as possible.

Second, Do not tell much in your questions. Contrive to educe every fact from the class. It is better to pause for a moment, and to put one or two subordinate questions, with a view to bring out the truth you are seeking, than to tell anything which the scholars could tell you. Never convey information in the form of a question.

A teacher ought not to be satisfied till he can get entire sentences for answers. These sentences will generally be paraphrases of the words used in the lesson, and the materials for making the paraphrases will have been developed in the course of the lesson by demanding, in succession, meanings and equivalents for all the principal words. It is worth while, now and then, to turn round pleasantly on some inattentive member of the class, or upon some one who has just given a mechanical answer, with the question, “What have we just said?” “Tell me what we have just learned about such a person?” Observe that the answer required to such a question must necessarily be a whole sentence; it will be impossible to answer it without a real effort of thought and of judgment in the selection of the learner's words, and without an actual acquaintance with the fact that has been taught.

Third, Questions should be definite and unmistakable, and, for the most part, admit of but one answer. An unskillful teacher puts vague, wide questions, such as, “What did he do?” “What did Abraham say?” “How did Joseph feel at such a time?” “What lesson ought we to learn from this?” questions to which no doubt he sees the right answer, because it is already in his mind; but which, perhaps, admit of several equally good answers, according to the different points of view from which different minds would look at them.

Vague and indefinite questions always produce three different results, according to the class of children to whom they are addressed. The not really thoughtful and sensible boy is simply bewildered by them. The bold and confident boy who does not think, answers at random, and is thus strengthened in a habit of inaccuracy, and encouraged in the mischievous practice of guessing. There is a third class of children, not very keen, but sly and knowing, nevertheless, who watch the teacher's peculiarities, know the structure of his sentences, so as to find out which answer he expects. They do not understand the subject so well, perhaps, as many others, but they understand the teacher better, and can more quickly pronounce the characteristic word, or the particular answer he expects. Now we do not hesitate to say, that as far as real education and development of thought are concerned, each of these three classes of children is injured by the habit of vague, wide, and ambiguous questioning which is so common among teachers.

So much for the language of questioning. But it is worth while to give a passing notice to the order and arrangement which should always characterize a series of questions. They should, in fact, always follow one another in systematic order; each should seem to grow out of the answer which preceded it, and should have a clear logical connection with it.

We have often been struck, in reading the newspapers, to find what plain and sensible evidence the witnesses all appear to give at judicial trials. We recognize the name of some particular person, and we know, perhaps, that he is an uneducated man, apt to talk in an incoherent and desultory way on most subjects, utterly incapable of telling a simple story without wandering and blundering, and very nervous withal; yet if he happens to be a witness at a trial, and we read the published report of his testimony, we are surprised to find what a connected, straightforward story it is; there is no irrelevant or needless matter introduced, and yet one significant fact is omitted. We wonder how such a man could have stood up in a crowded court, and narrated facts with all propriety and good taste. But the truth is, that the witness is not entitled to your praise. He never recited the narrative in the way implied by the newspaper report. But he stood opposite to a man who had studied the art of questioning, and he replied in succession to a series of interrogations which the barrister proposed to him. The reporter for the press has done no more than copy down, in the exact order in which they were given, all the replies to these questions; and if the sum of these replies read to us like a consistent narrative, it is because the lawyer knew how to marshal his facts beforehand, had the skill to determine what was necessary and what was not necessary to the case in hand, and to propose his questions so as to draw out, even from a confused and bewildered mind, a coherent statement of facts. We may take a hint from the practice of the bar in this respect; and, especially in questioning by way of examination, we may remember that the answers of the children, if they could be taken down at the moment, ought to form a complete, orderly, and clear summary of the entire contents of the lesson.

Of course we do not mean to insist too rigidly on an adherence to this rule. Misconceptions will reveal themselves in the course of the lesson, which will require to be corrected; hard words will occur, which need explanation; new trains of thought and inquiry will seem to start out of the lesson, and to demand occasional digression; it will, in fact, often become necessary to deviate a little to the right hand or to the left from the main path, for the sake of illustration, and for other good reasons. Still, the main purpose of the whole lesson should be kept steadily in view; all needless digression should be carefully avoided, and any incidental difficulties which are unexpectedly disclosed in the lesson should rather be remembered and reserved for future investigation, than permitted to beguile a teacher into a neglect of those truths which the lesson is primarily designed to teach.

A good deal of the success of a teacher depends upon the manner in which questions are proposed. Perhaps the most important requisite under this head is animation. It is necessary to avoid long pauses, and all monotony of voice, or sluggishness of manner; to vary the phraseology of your questions, and to seek in every way to kindle interest and enthusiasm about the lesson. But in doing this let us remember that we cannot give more than we possess; we cannot raise the minds of others above the level of our own; and therefore it is important that our manner should show a warm interest in the subject, and that our own love for sacred truth should be so strong as to convey itself, by the mere force of sympathy, into the hearts of those whom we undertake to instruct.

The whole sum of what may be said about questioning is comprised in this: It ought to set the learners to thinking, to promote activity and energy on their part, and to arouse the whole mental faculty into action, instead of blindly cultivating the memory at the expense of the higher intellectual powers. That is the best questioning which best stimulates action on the part of the learner; which gives him a habit of thinking and inquiring for himself; which tends in a great measure to render him independent of his teacher; which makes him, in fact, rather a skillful finder than a patient receiver of truth. All our questioning should aim at this; and the success of our teaching must ever be measured, not by the amount of information we have imparted, but by the degree in which we have strengthened the judgment and enlarged the capacity of our pupils, and imparted to them that searching and inquiring spirit which is a far surer basis for all future acquisitions than any amount of mere information whatever. —Erwin House, A. M.