by Kevin J. Browne

Created on: July 13, 2007   Last Updated: July 14, 2007

"The important thing is not to stop questioning." Albert Einstein

William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience tells the story "of a man who found himself at night slipping down the side of a precipice. At last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours. But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. He fell just six inches. If he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared."

I want to draw a moral from this story regarding students' hesitancy to ask questions. There seems to always be a great resistance to asking questions and the reasons are pretty standard. People don't want to look like they don't understand something. People don't want to feel stupid. People want to understand things on their own without assistance.

The struggle I want to address here and encourage you to give up is the struggle to understand without assistance. It is a noble struggle which is what makes it so difficult to give up. I should point out that I don't mean for you to give up the role of being a self learner. After all, you are your best teacher in the sense that discovering things for yourself is one of the best ways to truly learn something. However, of great assistance to this can be your instructors. Look upon them as your assistants in the learning process. The instructor is not in charge of your learning or understanding; you are. But they can be of great help. One way they can do this is to answer questions you may have. But to take advantage of this help you have to convince yourself that asking questions doesn't necessarily mean you're giving up your role as a self learner. You are instead supplementing your role as a self learner.

The relationship between student and instructor is very much like the relationship between player and coach in sports. The player is responsible for executing but the coach can give useful advice and pointers on how to improve the execution. Sometimes the coach does this without being asked by the player but often the player asks for advice. In the classroom the practice is usually one where the lectures given by the instructor serve as the unsolicited advice. Players (students) who need further assistance then must ask questions.

Everyone from time to time needs help with something. Above I mentioned several reasons people have for not asking questions. They don't want to look like the don't already

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