In all too many cases, the questioning process has been reduced and oversimplified to a search for pre-packaged answers. Artificial intelligence abounds. Questions are intended to provoke thought and inspire reflection, but all too often the process is short circuited by the simple answer, the quick truth or the appealing placebo. We know that the most important questions in life defy such formulaic responses and that recipe books require frequent revision in times of rapid change. Without such skills, we and our students are prisoners of conventional wisdom and the trend or bandwagon of the day.
Analysis is the underpinning of new thinking and wise choices.
If we hope to see inventive thought infused with critical judgment, questions and questioning must become a priority of schooling and must gain recognition as a supremely important technology. We must lay aside the forked branches of earlier times, the divining rods of soothsayers, technologists and futurists. Rather than reading the entrails or taking the omens to determine the future, we wield powerful questions as tools to construct a future of our own choosing. The photographs were shot by Jamie McKenzie. Materials published in From Now On may be duplicated in hard copy format if unchanged in format and content for educational, nonprofit school district and university use only and may also be sent from person to person by e-mail.