Living the Questions

From the Course Designer

Welcome. If you are here, it might be because you feel the tug of an inward question, a curiosity about what, ultimately, an education is for.

Perhaps you have a vague sense of an answer to this question but it eludes your attempts to capture it in words. Perhaps you have the words, but your intuitions don’t amount to a coherent argument. If you are here, you might believe that your students, too, are similarly curious about the purpose of their learning, and that their curiosity is also shrouded in ambiguity, even doubt. If you are here, you might believe that your students are hungry for something more.

The question of what education is for is another way of asking what kind of education matters, which begs a more fundamental question: What in life matters?

This is not a question that we ask alone; we ask it in a chorus of voices from across time and space, cultures and traditions. We ask it along with history’s great philosophers, religious thinkers, saints, artists, activists, and ordinary folks alike. In a time characterized by increasing uncertainty and social isolation, when traditional sources of meaning and value have given way to epistemic disruption and existential disarray, it would seem as if we ask this question alone, if we ask it at all.

In such a time, we need an education that is at once intellectually and morally formative, grounded in the pursuit of existential meaning and an ethic of truth-seeking, one that speaks to the Question. If you are here, you might believe that as well.

“Living the Questions: Approaches to a Life Worth Living” is designed to encourage high school students to seriously and carefully consider, from their own lived experience, perennial questions of meaning and purpose in order to discover and clarify their own beliefs and values. Students don’t do so alone but in conversation with an ensemble of voices and perspectives, both ancient and modern. It emphasizes first-person engagement and participation in community that fosters true respect and recognition across important and enduring lines of difference.

With the book Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most as our guide, “Living the Questions…” invites students to grapple with ancient and modern texts and fi gures and practice rigorous introspection and intellectual discernment to articulate for themselves a provisional but authentic response to some of the most urgent questions of the human condition, chief among them What does it mean to live a good life?

In order to support students in the process, I’ve included in this curriculum a variety of contemplative and reflective exercises, embodied activities, engaging assignments, and varied assessments based on journaling, discussion, and oral presentation. By integrating and emphasizing the skills of meaning-making alongside traditional academic skills, students are empowered to both seek and create meaning in their lives; discern signal from noise; and become more flexible, courageous, and resilient in the face of an unpredictable world, a world that sorely needs them.
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This facilitation guide aims to support you, the teacher, in implementing the course in a way that works best for you and your school context. It is an invitation to be a part of a community of educators, in both secondary and postsecondary education, who sing in the chorus of these questions. Here you will fi nd descriptions of core pedagogical attitudes and instructional approaches, tips for particular methods and activities, and suggestions for potential challenges and setbacks along the way.

If you are here, the journey has already begun. I invite you to take the next step, together.

In Partnership,

Michael LoStracco
Chair of Religious Studies and Philosophy
William Penn Charter School
Philadelphia, PA