Translator: Jane Dineen Reviewer: Denise RQ
Who among you asks at least one question a day?
Please raise your hands.
Who asks at least one question a day?
Who among you in your professional life asks at least one question a day?
It's obvious: to ask questions is an everyday act.
It's an everyday act,
and yet, you and I, consistently ask the same types of questions,
which represent only 15% of the possibilities for questions.
Why? Because when we ask questions,
we want to obtain information that confirms our vision of the world,
that confirm our perception of the situation,
that actually confirm our map of the world.
If someone does something a bit like this,
you would ask, "Why? What's gotten into you?
We are, after all, at the Sorbonne!"
And it's up to him to justify it, to explain himself,
because we want to understand it.
"Comprendre" comes from the Latin "comprendere",
to grasp with intelligence so as to gather into a coherent whole.
We want to understand what he does in terms of our map of the world.
It's because we want to understand that we limit our questions
to only 10 to 15% of possible questions.
And I, today, want above all to talk to you about
the other 80 % of questions.
of their richness, of the need to use them.
I would also like to talk to you about questiology,
the art and science of asking questions.
There is a technique for multiplying your questions.
The first to understand, long ago,
the need to multiply or change questions, was Socrates.
Socrates gave questions as one gives a present.
If one of his disciples complains of injustice, that's unjust.
Socrates, rather than ask him, "Why do you complain about injustice?"
- notice that this does not advance the debate-
asks him,
"What hypotheses can you make to conclude that there is an injustice?"
You see that the perspective of the response changes sides.
Here, the disciple examines how it works.
In offering this question,
Socrates allows the disciple to think about how he thinks.
That is the definition of reflection.
And, in addition, he lets him discover what constitutes his map of the world.
To lead out and cause to emerge
is the etymological meaning of "educate".
The objective of Socrates in asking questions was to cause reflection
in order to educate his young disciples.
His idea was remarkable; and Aristotle, another philosopher,
founded the first secondary school in Athens on this principle:
to ask questions that cause reflection in order to educate.
So, where are we today in the schools of the 21st century,
we who live in France?
Questions are abundantly used,
but mainly for evaluating the student,
who must then respond with what he has been taught.
In this case, one poses a question expecting only one answer,
which one knows in advance.
That is the definition of interrogation.
To instruct, and then to interrogate is the school of the 21st century today,
Very, very different from what Socrates has in mind.
But that is what we have learned.
And so when we ask questions,
we ask questions in order to examine what is happening around us,
to verify, and to consolidate our map of the world.
You may say to me, "All this works quite well, why ask other questions?
What good can that do?"
And Einstein pointed the way to a response.
This message is magnificent
because Einstein explains to us the genius of his research.
It lies in forming questions more than in answering them.
In fact, we can tell ourselves that,
if he had asked himself the traditional question,
"Why are the celestial movements
not explained by current theories?",
he would not have caused physics to progress, as he did.
Instead, we can imagine he asked himself a Socratic question,
"What hypothesis do our current theories make
to explain the celestial movements?"
And there, as a revolutionary, he proposes to change the hypotheses.
He proposes that time and space are not constant
that time and space are not constant.
A revolutionary idea.
But in doing this, he changes the map of the world of physics,
and he allows incredible innovations in physics.
So, you see, asking questions is crucial,
and the technique of asking questions, questiology,
to understand that,
put yourself into the skin of the one to whom you ask the question.
Whatever the question is about,.
you will first suggest taking a certain stance.
A stance, that is when you ask someone a question,
you invite him to respond possibly as one who acts
- he does something -
or as an observer, he sees what happens,
or you ask him to reflect on what he feels,
or again, to take a step back from the situation.
The first way to vary the questions.
The second way is a mental action.
When you ask someone a question,
you invite him to make a specific mental action.
We can compare mental actions to physical actions.
If you kick a ball or hit it with a tennis racket,
you don't use the same muscles or obtain the same results
That makes sense.
In the same way, if I ask you to summarize a situation,
you will use different parts of your brain
than if I ask you to analyze a situation.
These do not use the same neurons.
They do not use the same connections.
To help you better understand how questiologie works,
here is a video of a coaching session with teenagers.
(Video)
Student: However, I work hard, I participate in class, I pay attention,
I work a lot at home,
but once I'm in a test, I forget everything, I'm blocked.
You see this teenager, he is already extremely active,
he is an actor in his situation.
He works, he listens in class, he participates,
he is looking for solutions for his exam.
If I ask him the question,
"Why are you blocked during the exam?",
that won't help him.
He is already taking action,
and with my question, I would be asking him to take action.
Instead, I will suggest that he change his stance,
first to feel what happens,
and then to take a step back from what he does.
(Video)
Teacher: When you are facing an exam, and you are blocked,
how do you feel?
Student: Actually, I have a visceral fear of failing my test.
It keeps me from getting anywhere.
Teacher: And what are you afraid of when you are afraid of failing your exam?
Student: Uh, OK, if I have bad grades,
I think that will keep me from choosing what I want to do later on.
(On stage) FF: You see, just in changing stances,
this teen can become aware of his map of the world. Simply.
And the question that allows him to take a step back
is not difficult to construct.
Its grammar is not incredibly difficult.
It was enough to double the verb.
"What are you afraid of when you are afraid of failing your exam?"
and he realizes that the stakes of his exam
are in fact to be able to choose his career.
To take a step back by doubling the verb,
works with any verb; you can try it.
Once that is done, he became aware of his map of the world.
It is mow a matter of offering him opportunities, new paths.
And for that, we need to suggest different mental actions.
The mental action that he has used until now
is to describe what happens to him.
Here, I will suggest to him a mental action
by bringing together two disparate elements.
(Video)
Teacher: So, this means that, to fail an exam,
prevents you from choosing what you want to do later on.
Student: Well, no, I won't be blocked just because of one exam
from one option or another.
FF: "Well, no. Well, no." It's as simple as that.
After this mental action, I'll suggest another to him;
this one will put him into a situation.
(Video)
Teacher: Agreed. What's the worst that it could mean, to fail an exam?
Student: I would simply need to retake it, to be thorough, to pay attention.
FF: You see, suggesting to him mental actions and different stances,
can multiply the possibilities, whatever the subject.
Double good news in this story
is that there are only four stances and about ten mental actions.
It's completely manageable: four and ten is manageable.
The good news is that this multiplies by 40 the possibilities for questions
and so of responses, and so of possibilities.
So you who are parents, in your private lives, parents, children,
or who are husbands, wives, who are friends,
ask different questions, open opportunities for your near ones.
In your professional lives, know how to ask different questions,
allowing for a much wider map of the world and new possibilities.
So this is the goal of questiology:
to allow everyone to vary and multiply the types of questions they ask,
to choose those that reward them and allow them to progress.
Today, in the 21st century, we face unprecedented challenges,
economic, ecological, demographic, etc.
We'll need to respond to these challenges as Einstein invites us to,
not by immediately looking for answers,
but by asking new good questions.
We need, for our future,
leaders who are capable of asking better questions.
And that is the goal of questiology.
I thank you for listening,
and if you have questions, I am at your service.
Thank you.
(Applause)