No. 30 Various thoughts on lectures and questions

Note No. 29, which I wrote based on Togetter

While I was writing it, a Togetter ranking

A story about how if you ask 'Does anyone have any questions?' at a lecture, you get nothing, but if you rephrase it like this, the questions won't stop
https://togetter.com/li/1844703

had come up. I feel like these kinds of topics come up periodically, but personally, I don't trust things like this.

However, this time, even before that, it was extremely difficult for me to understand what the person featured in this Togetter was doing (the meaning of their comments). Because

'It's a lecture technique for schools, but if you say "Take 30 seconds to discuss with the person next to you if you have any questions" instead of "Does anyone have any questions?", the questions won't stop. This is Japanese education.'

Isn't that a lot of strange Japanese? Honestly, I still haven't fully understood the meaning of the whole thing (what does 'This is Japanese education' mean?), but I think the methodology this person is advocating is

'having people discuss with those around them what kind of questions they should ask'

I think that's what it is. Assuming I understood it that way, if you ask me if this method is that good, I don't necessarily think so. It might work in some cases, but I suspect it's actually almost useless. Why?

First of all, as a major premise, I am surprised that an overwhelming number of people, including those involved, overlook this, but let's keep in mind that 'asking a question' itself is a highly advanced technique. In other words, 'asking a question' is

1) listening accurately to someone's talk, 2) grasping what you understand and what you don't understand within that, 3) further selecting the items you want to ask about, and 4) verbalizing that into the form of a 'question'

It is an act that requires at least this many steps. Frankly speaking, even for experienced professionals, this is quite difficult. Based on my personal experience, I think it is difficult to ask a question unless you can anticipate about half of the answer before you even hear it. At the very least, if you listen to a talk and don't understand anything, you don't even know what or how to ask. This is a quite universal and fundamental difficulty that exists completely independently of the phenomena that people who love to wave around educational theories like to talk about, such as what's wrong with Japan or the education system. Therefore, discourse that discusses 'questions' while completely ignoring this point can basically be ignored.

Because it is such a difficult process, I can understand the attempt to incorporate it into what is called 'active learning' or the curriculum, but frankly speaking, it is impossible. If you are going to try, you need to set up appropriate conditions, such as having a small number of people or gathering people with similar academic ability and level of understanding, and that would be in the realm of highly specialized education. In other words, it is that difficult, and I think it is almost impossible to do it on the side in elementary or popular lectures and classes.

In other words, the act of 'asking a question' is a very advanced technique in the context of listening to a lecture, so those who can do it are limited to those who have considerable ability even among the audience the lecture is targeting. Therefore, those who can and want to ask questions among them should do so as appropriate, and there is no need to force those who cannot. Even if you try to do this by 'forcing a discussion and having everyone do it together,'

'forcing a discussion and having everyone do it together'

there is no way that such a large number of people can perform the steps 1) - 4) mentioned above all at once, so it will likely end with nothing to show for it, just the pretense of having had a discussion.

If you happen to get a meaningful question from that, I'm sorry, but you should suspect that the content of the original lecture is thin or shoddy. A 'masterpiece' lecture is like a master's performance of rakugo itself; it is sometimes so brilliant that there is no room to interject a question (no fool would talk to a master while they are telling a story).

Originally, 'education' should be about making the ability to ask appropriate 'questions' or have 'discussions' a goal and providing basic training for that, but people who like to wave around this kind of theory seem to have this all turned upside down. I'm not saying it's entirely bad, but it should be treated as one of the sub-options, and it should not be made the main focus. If you have the energy to worry about such things, it would be better to devote yourself to giving a slightly better lecture yourself. Even more so, if your pettiness of trying to push your own incompetence onto the audience and have them compensate for it is visible, it's not even worth talking about.