1.8: Chapter 8- Six Very Powerful Questions
- Page ID
- 73449
Respond to Your World with Questions
Educated people—whether they are political scientists or not—assume a critical mindset with respect to the world. This is not to say that they are always criticizing everything and everyone, or that they are cynical. A critical mindset means that we refuse to automatically accept what we are told or what we read. We may eventually do so, but only after careful consideration and reflection. Also, we should be critical about challenging and seeking to improve the status quo in politics and society. Status quo basically means “the situation as it is now” in any given realm. A good education frees the mind from superstition, magical thinking, tribalism, knee-jerk reactions, and baseless deference. It empowers us with knowledge about history, art, politics, literature, and the varieties of human experience. A good education enables us to participate in the vigorous debates that sustain and enrich a republic. It allows us to recognize the limitations of the status quo and make things better.
Above all, an educated person is one who asks questions. Too often, people start out with a critical mindset—think of the questions asked by young children—but then seem to have it socialized out of them. Why is that? It’s not as though the world becomes less interesting as you grow up. Some blame a mind-numbing mass schooling system that extinguishes genuine curiosity. (3) Others suggest that dogmatic churches snuff out inquiry because religion proclaims to have the Truth. (4) Still others argue that a critical mindset can’t flourish in a society that exalts amusement the way ours does. (5) It is not this course’s purpose to get to the bottom of that problem, although it’s an interesting conundrum. In all likelihood, many factors work together to condition people not to think critically and not to question. However, we must resist that tendency. In this text, we are concerned that you become students of the American political system, that you read widely, that you think deeply, and that you ask questions.
What kinds of questions should we ask? Any will do, really, but a basic toolkit includes the following six very powerful questions:
How Was This Decision Reached?
Qui Bono? or Who Benefits?
Who Has Power?
What Is the Evidence?
Of What is This an Example?
In politics, as in life, many things are happening all the time. It is easy to get disoriented by the many political events that seem to occur in a blur—sort of like watching fence posts whiz by your side window when you’re driving on a country road. But the political world is not as complicated as it initially appears, especially if you get in the habit of asking, “Of what is this an example?” Events repeat themselves throughout history, although they may manifest themselves differently each time. Still, by sorting and categorizing events, we can begin to generalize and systematically analyze how similar events manifest themselves somewhat differently each time. Is event A behaving like all those other events in that category? If not, what is different about it?
Take something as basic as an election, for example. Elections come and go, and many people see them as individually distinct events that are entirely new each time—new election year, new candidates, new attack ads, new results. But if you analyze them more carefully, elections fall into patterns as well—e.g., elections with an incumbent defending their seat versus open-seat elections; elections in good economic times versus elections during economic downturns; elections before the invention of the Internet versus elections since; and elections during presidential years versus mid-term elections.
By first asking ourselves “Of what is this an example?” and doing some careful sorting, perhaps in a typology, we can begin to generate interesting research questions, such as “Why is voter turnout so much higher in presidential elections than it is in mid-term elections?”
How Is This Related to That?
References
- Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York: Delacorte, 1969. Page 23.
- Rob Hopkins, From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019. Page 121.
- John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2009.
- Wendy Kaminer, et al., The Harm Done by Religion. Inquiry Press, 2016. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve, 2007.
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: The Penguin Group, 1985.