I was photographing this polar bear in the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History (a staple of these museums; doesn't this one look like he belongs in Scooby-doo?) when I noticed the family nearby was testing out different gloves in ice water to see how polar bear fat keeps them warm. I wanted to try, but I find doing such things alone in museums kind of awkward. Them: "So, why are you visiting today?" Me: "Oh, I study you guys for a living." Then I do my best "researcher squint."
As I made my way on, I overheard the museum staffmember ask the family a question. I was curious, so I listened:
On average, how many penguins can a polar bear eat in a day?
What do you think? Got an answer? Good.
Here's a thing about me: I love questions. They're such powerful tools for rejiggering your thinking or illuminating a point. A well-formed qeustion is half-solved. I forget who said that. One of the coolest things I picked up a few years ago was The Interrogative Mood: A novel? by Padgett Powell. It's nothing short of brilliant.
So questions shock thoughts because we assume there's an answer. I explored this in the Race exhibit. There the exhibit started off with the basic question: What is race? And because we're conditioned to answer with something substantial, something definitive, when the exhibit responds with "Race is a social construction," we find that the question wasn't entirely honest. Yet the experience is powerful, for it clarifies something fundamental about what race really is. "Is" here denotes being, existence, core features; "social construction" denotes just the opposite.
So, how many penguins can a polar bear eat (on average) in a day?
The answer, of course, is zero. Polar bears live in the arctic, penguins in the antarctic. I would argue (because this is what happened to me) that being tricked by such a question creates a more memorable experience. It is much more memorable, I believe, than questions like: "Where do polar bears live?" or "Where do penguins live?" or some other exhibit prompt. The experience of being set up to fail helps us remember important geographic knowledge.
What's the rhetoric of trick questions? And how can I use them more often in my teaching to provoke, shock, and promote learning?
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