Make Just One Change
Review by John Roche
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Rothstein, D., & Santana, L. Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions. Harvard Education Press, 2011.
It is obvious to anyone who has worked with children that asking questions is an intimate part of being human, and as classical educators, one of our tasks is to make deliberate and consistent what is already innate in the child. As this is true for grammar, logic, and rhetoric, so too is it true for generating questions, especially for class seminars. But this is not easy, as many students bring tangential or closed-ended questions, leaving many teachers to wait on having seminars until the students are “ready” or at a “logic stage.” What Make Just One Change does is provide the teacher with a method that that offers the student, regardless of age, a way to be deliberate and consistent in asking great questions.
Rothstein & Santana developed the Question Formation Technique (QFT) in order to provide students with rules and a procedure to help them generate, improve, and select essential questions. Students are given a Question Focus (QFocus), a quote or a rich text, from which they are to generate questions. After generating questions, the students are to improve their questions by analyzing the difference between open- and close-ended questioning, then the students prioritize the questions, selecting which questions should be addressed first, and the method finishes with a reflection on what they learned in the process. As for the questions themselves, that is up to the teacher who can use the questions in a seminar, a class discussion, or even as an assessment.
The first eight chapters of the book are dedicated to the details of each procedural step, giving a chapter to each step and clarifying what the student is expected to do and how the teacher can assist. The last two chapters give testimonials on how QFT has impacted pedagogical practice and student learning. The book itself is brief with clearly concisely written with chapters organized in such a way that they can serve as a future reference for teachers.
Though this book is not written for classical educators, there are not really any other books like this on how to intentionally generate and improve questions. There are many books on the Socratic method, and there is a plethora of online literature on how to lead Socratic or Harkness seminars; however, most of these sources assume that students already know how to generate the questions needed to bring to a seminar, a task that can frustrate an eager teacher who must rely on the natural inquisitiveness of a class. For the classical educator, what this book provides is a way to teach students how to create and bring essential questions to the seminar table, using a method that can be appropriate at any grade.
The book concludes with an ideological eye towards how asking better questions can make better democratic citizens. Not everyone may find this chapter helpful, and it is easily skippable without taking away from the method. With that said, it is an ancient view that the purpose of an education is to create model citizens, so though there is an ideological stance at the end of the book, it is not one that is too far off from our roots in classical education.
What is not provided in this book is how one can add QFT to the classical classroom; nevertheless, the creation of good questions is an important part of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Learning the difference between open-ended and closed questions is part of a grammatical lesson. Determining which question is most important deals with logic. Generating and refining an essential question belongs to rhetoric. QFT not only easily applies to the trivium, but asking essential questions are the backbone for the reading and study of history and the great books. In a way, classical education, with its emphasis on wonder as a passion that moves one from ignorance to understanding, is programmed for students to ask questions. The method this book provides will find a home in the classical classroom right next to mimetic instruction and narration.
John Roche holds a BA in English Literature from DePaul University, an MDiv from Catholic Theological Union, and an MA in Humanities with a Classical Education concentration from the University of Dallas. He currently teaches middle school grammar, logic, Latin, and 8th grade religion at Saint Agatha Academy, a small classical K-8 school in Winchester KY. As a deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Lexington, he also works in Hispanic ministry. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Bellarmine University.