Upbringing Questions

During a discussion recently on participation of people in study groups, one of the comments was people were ‘disappearing’ during the study session, and not asking questions. While the former is true and some people just click join and do something else, the second got me to think, about why some people don’t (or do) ask questions when they’re not clear about something, especially when learning?

In my view, and in Malaysian culture I think, questions are reserved for the end. Even in meetings, people don’t normally interrupt one another and ask questions when no one else is speaking. On some occasions, the meeting host will even go round the table to make sure people have no pending questions. In the study group that I joined, a general question is thrown out if there’s any question, and normally there is a taker, but still, some people rarely asked questions.

Another possibility is that the people don’t know what to ask, either because they understand everything, or they don’t know where to start. In the study group I joined, I think it is the later. I can sympathise with this as right now I am learning about Solid State Interlocking (SSI) and when asked whether I have any concerns or questions, I can’t formulate any since my thoughts are all jumbled up.

Another reason I can think of is that people do not feel ‘safe’ to ask questions. Related to the second point above, they might feel uncomfortable and afraid of being embarrassed when their question is ‘silly’ or not very well thought. Some other people might dismiss this as being silly in itself, as they themselves would not be hesitant at all to ask. But I think not everyone have the same upbringing where it is easy to ask questions, so people’s level of confidence vs curiosity is not the same.

Either way, it’s not really useful if people are not involved in their learning and doing it passively. I sometimes suffer from the same attitude and problem, and wish to improve.

Thank you for reading.