Why did students stop asking questions?

The article discusses two key factors determining the specificity of learning in modern society: (1) the process of the unbridled individualization, and (2) the aggressive accessibility of information. If we take the ancient paideia, where man was "dissolved in the integrity" i.e. in the community and the cosmos as the starting point, we discover that the purpose of the socialization process which included upbringing and education was the creation of the citizen. In this situation, the person was directing towards wholeness through self-determining, and this makes the philosophical practice of "care of the self" the overcoming of individuality. In the recent conditions, "care of the self" turns to be the opposite of the ancient practice. People becoming mentally attached to external objects and following the changing fashion are "dissolved in individuality". Oral communication gives way to the visual one. At the extreme, the development of modern man turns into the self-assertion of the point. Yet, inside the aggressive information field, this egocentric orientation means the complete dependence on the external environment. Structured knowledge transforms into a flat information field that can be easily added without changing the overall picture. This picture is a mosaic randomly assembled from disparate pieces. Accordingly, the situation of the lack of understanding does not appear; yet this is the key situation for inquiry, because only the sense of misunderstanding, miscomprehension can lead to interest, to questions and, ultimately, to meaningful knowledge. If we turn to the ancient practice of learning by the example of Aristotle, we draw attention to the wholeness of knowledge, surprise as the beginning of knowledge, oral communication as a way of creating knowledge. Integrity is achieved by systemati-zation of knowledge obtained by the establishment of genera and species relations. Surprise is necessary to fix the situation of misunderstanding. Oral communication determines the need to keep in mind a long chain of reasoning. This means a constant involvement of long-term memory, because only this type of memory allows constructing a multidimensional picture of the grasped reality. In addition, the dialogue, in which the training has been conducted, sets questions, hones the ability to build chains of reasoning and argument. It is all this that does not allow the modern student to ask questions.

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