Ask Around

In every profession, a practitioner occasionally comes across a situation that was not perfectly rehearsed. In all forms of engineering, there are new problems to solve, new constraints to overcome, etc. In medicine, there are unfamiliar combinations of symptoms. In education, the students keep presenting an educator with new learning difficulties, misconceptions, missing knowledge and skills, in-class social trends, students' personality disorders, etc. Just to make sure there is no argument about the every profession claim: Even the stereotypical factory worker in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times comes across unfamiliar situations.

Meeting an unfamiliar situation happens more to novices than to the experienced workers. The novice can be expected to ask around - find someone to consult with. It may be a more experienced peer or a superior expert. Interesting: Even these last two simple sentences give hints as to why people may refrain from asking questions: It may brand them as "novices", and it may position others as "superior". God forbid that!

Still, in many professions it is acceptable and expected that people will consult with others. In medicine - mostly at hospitals - consulting with colleagues is an established practice. Many other professions take the need for granted to a great extent. I once knew an engineer who lost his job because he wouldn't ask questions. His problem was not a specific error that could have been avoided, but the habit of not asking. His bosses had a few talks with him, explaining the need to consult with others, but he couldn't.

Ok, so the graph below is not very pretty. But I do like the idea.

• The X-axis represents Independence - growing rightwards
• The Y-axis represents Effectiveness - growing upwards
• The graph is a total lie - not based on research - but it illustrates the claims below

The blue line - especially the left-hand-side of it - shows what we know intuitively: That someone asking way too many questions doesn't do much good, and interferes with others' work, which may even cause some damage. The more experienced and independent the worker (or volunteer, or parent, or player, or whoever), the less they tend to ask questions, and the more effective they are in whatever endeavor in which they are engaged.

But then there is the red part of the line, which is less intuitive, but ultimately familiar. Asking too little leads to unnecessary mistakes. The damage depends very much on the type of activity. A salesperson in a shop, who never calls a peer of a superior to deal with new situations, will occasionally lose a customer. A doctor who never calls a peer or an expert, will occasionally lose a patient. What would such a teacher lose?

This is not a new idea. Hubris is an old problem.

The profession of education - specifically teaching classes - brings the practitioner into extremely complex and unpredictable situations: Many students, each of them a whole world of knowledge, skills, habits, preconceptions, moods and emotional state. All interacting with each other. All interacting with an ever-changing external society. It is totally clear that not all situations can be predicted, memorized and rehearsed. The skilled and experienced teacher can deal with many such situations, but clearly in some cases a consultation is essential. In more than one country, this doesn't happen.

When teachers do ask around, many interesting things can happen: Pupils are more likely to get better answers to their own questions, as the teacher is more likely to get a better answer from peers or other sources, when confronted with a new question. Minor emotional problems - such as during adolescence - can be dealt with according to the accumulated experience of the teacher's peer group rather than according to the individual teachers' experience, which is by definition more limited. This will give a better chance that the minor problem will remain limited in degree and duration, and not turn unto a lifelong learning issue, dealing-with-authorities issue, or anything else. Pupils can learn that it's ok not to know everything, and that it is important to know where and how to get help with tough issues. Last but not least, the teachers themselves keep reminding themselves that they are dealing with a complex and deep reality. They can gain more respect for their own profession and for themselves, while also maintaining a healthy humility.

A semi-personal note: When I consider the employment of people, and go through a trial period, sometimes they come across a problem they can't solve. If the prospective employee asks a friend and manages to solve the problem this way - I consider it a success. It's a positive type of resourcefulness. I don't expect anyone to be able to do everything on their own. But I do value a person's ability to notice their own limits, and their ability to seek extra knowledge elsewhere. It's not just my idea: In the movie Magnum Force, Dirty Harry said: "A good man always knows his limitations." Who am I to contradict him?

In business management circles, there is (or was - fashions change quickly) a debate around the maxim that "It's better to apologize later than to ask permission first." This is a brilliant demonstration of rationalization: I don't like to ask questions, fearing I will look indecisive, so I will create a nice little ideology around it. Admittedly, in the extreme, it usually is better to make a mistake once a year than ask three times a day. But I hear this statement sometimes being used to justify never asking. By saying that, those people define themselves as existing in the red area in the graph above. They prefer to make mistakes rather than to appear less than all-knowing. Such an attitude, if it cannot be cured, should be grounds for dismissal from any position where one has an effect on people's lives.

Teachers, and everybody else in the education system, have a profound effect on people's lives. Even those teachers we don't remember have such an effect. Either positive or negative. Either by action or by omission. We are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. By asking around and getting support, we can all improve our work, and even ourselves.