The power of questioning

Divya had a great academic reputation, she always scored pretty good marks on her exams. This was largely due to her habit of getting her concepts cleared by asking questions. Whenever in doubt about anything whether in school or at home, she would ask questions until she got a clear-cut idea about the topic in question.

The habit of asking questions when in doubt is a great habit to have. A lot of children are not like Divya in the sense that they do not ask questions. Ajay was one such child who hesitated a lot to ask questions. He thought that teachers might feel that he was less intelligent than others and found it hard to understand topics. He also thought that if he asked a wrong or silly question, the other children might laugh at him. So he would not ask questions for the fear of getting ashamed. This resulted in him not understanding the concepts properly and hindered both his marks and understanding. 

Even though they had contradictions, Divya and Ajay were very good friends. Divya knew the fact that Ajay hesitated to ask questions, so she used to help him. She had told Ajay to let her know if he had a doubt, so she could ask the teacher and clear it out for him. But she wanted to do something that helped Ajay get rid of his hesitation and ask questions himself.

One day, Divya made a plan with her teacher to free Ajay from his fear. According to the plan, when Ajay told Divya to ask the teacher for a doubt, Divya said to the teacher, “Ma’am, Ajay wants to ask a doubt”. The teacher replied, “Tell me, Ajay, what is the doubt you have?” Ajay got afraid of this and replied “No ma’am, no doubt” The teacher called Ajay and said, “Dear if you have any doubt then please let me know, don’t hesitate to ask questions when in doubt.  If you will not ask questions now then you will not understand the topic.” Listening to the teacher, Ajay finally got rid of his hesitation and asked the question to the teacher. After clearing the doubt, the teacher called Divya and told Ajay about the plan they had made. Ajay got very happy to see that his friend had helped him to remove his fear. He thanked Divya for doing so, and from that day, Ajay slowly developed the habit of asking questions.

What we learnt

Questioning is very important for the development of our understanding and for emotional intelligence. Hence, we should never hesitate from asking questions.