Questions = Power

Obsessed with answers, we have lost sight of the power and value of questions. Debates over globalization, climate change, health care, and poverty will not be "solved" with simple answers, but that's what Americans are being trained to expect. Schlesinger argues that we're besieged by cultural forces that urge us to avoid critical thinking and independent analysis. The media reduces politics to a spectator sport, standardized tests teach students to fill in the dots instead of opening their minds, and even the Internet promotes habits that discourage looking deeper.

But the situation isn't hopeless. Schlesinger profiles individuals and institutions renewing the practice of inquiry at a time when our society demands such activity from us all. Our resilience will depend on our ability to struggle with what we don't know, to live and think outside comfortable bubbles of sameness, and, ultimately, to ask questions.

Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, considers the decline of civic consciousness as symptomatic of a general "habit of mind." She adduces much evidence about the diminishing use of "Why?" among American youth and in society at large. From the Internet to the decline of civics education in recent Bush Administration policy, the sources of our indifference move from the philosophical to the explicitly political. There are pedagogical bright spots to suggest methods to revitalize questioning in the classroom and "slow democracy" in public life. Schlesinger helps connect educational theory with the current debate about "social capital" in Robert D. Putnam's classic, Bowling Alone. Verdict Schlesinger's book may attract a wide audience of readers concerned with education, political science, and community organizing. Recommended.--Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.-Erie -- Library Journal, August, 2009