A Beautiful Question

Considering the 99%,  how can we engage those who are seeking higher education but do not have the opportunities to do so?

In the readings for Berger, we were faced with the thoughts and the ideas leading up to the Beautiful Question. This question is meant to be the question of all questions.

“A beautiful question  is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something- and that may serve as a catalyst to bring about change …. The focus here is on questions that can be acted upon, questions that can lead to tangible results and change. (Berger, 8).

In the beginning of making a beautiful question, you are faced with is asking this question going to help the greater good? How will this question spark new ideas in order to fix the problem at hand. In my question, it addresses the problem with access to higher education such as college and so on from there. This is actionable. What are we , as a whole, going to do to give the opportunity for everyone who wants it to do so. For the longest, college has been a battle not only with money, but with the education level and needed scores to get in. With each state having different curriculum and each county having a different way of approaching the lessons and learning, there is never a general idea of what all students should be learning.  At the end of every students career who want to seek higher education, they all have to pass the same tests. So why are we all learning different subjects and ways to do one thing when at the end of the day, we all have to take the same tests to get to the same place. This is why my question is a beautiful one, as it opens into so many ideas and concepts to make higher education accessible to those who need and want it.

I chose this question because I am one of those students who has to fight and struggle more than the average to get where I am. My first question was only geared to medical school. “Why is medical school so expensive?” looking back you can clearly answer that question with facts. So I thought how could I keep my original question of why the expense. After all the rotations, I was able to see that I needed the question to be actionable and at the end of the day the question needed to make people think and make plans to move in this movement.  

During the rotation with Professor DePree, we explored  the life of Jill Tater. With this we were faced with the facts that for here being a woman in her family she was not granted the bloodline-based scholarship at Cornell University and was restricted in her graduate program of not to get married. This plays a huge part in my beautiful question has it shows the obstacles for Tater to receive the funding needed for her education. She was also steered in the wrong direction in her high school studies as they made her take sewing, claiming that was what a woman needed.

In the rotation with Professor Ivanova, we discuss the impact of memes. One that really stood out to me was the 99% meme. Stating that the world is the 99% and only 1% has the opportunity to do anything. This gave me the idea of putting this into my question because it is not only the people without money it is also  the people who are not giving the proper education to get where they need to be in life.

Work Cited

Berger, Warren. A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.