Ideology and Theory: The Moral Basis of Discourse and Analysis" Douglas Meyers

I love how Meyers starts the article off with a quote from Adams Phillips about questioning.  Phillips stated that questioning develops in two stages, (1) imperative, and (2) interrogative. The imperative stage is suppose to represent the immature stage, the reader makes demands of what they want out of the book where as the interrogative stage reader begins to question the book. The interrogative stage represents the mature stage. The reader learns when to question and not to question. I believe that Phillips was trying to say that teachers are imperative because the questions are derived from them; students are not able to produce their questions and them out there in a true spirited class discussion. In order for a reader to truly get the most out of their reading is to generate their own questions. Meyers is an advocate of student generated questions. He developed ten ways to involve students in creating questions to be used in literature discussions. The ten methods that he mentioned were: (1) creating one key question about a literary work, (2) creating one key question and explaining its importance, (3) creating a list of important questions about a literary work, (4) creating a list of important questions and rank-ordering them, (5) creating a list important questions and rank-ordering them with an explanation, (6) creating questions based on Purves and Ripper's four catagories of response, (7) creating a set of questions focused on literary elements, (8) creating a set of questions based on the questioning circle, (9) creating a set of questions focused on literal and inferential levels of questions, and (10) creating questions based on particular critical approaches. Meyers states: "Knowing how to ask questions inspires lifelong learning. Knowing how to ask questions about literature empowers lifelong reading, the promotion of which, I believe should be our ultimate goal teachers." Meyers' beliefs are that students if students are allowed to generate their own questions from their readings they will gain more insight in reading. I agree with Meyers' tactics. Students can feel inhibited when they are not free to question or express themselves.