Student Thinking: Telling or Asking

A colleague sent out a link to an ASCD article about framing essential questions.  My favorite passage is below:

" Essential questions in this sense arise naturally and recur throughout one's life. Such questions are broad in scope and universal by nature. What is justice? Is art a matter of taste or principles? How much should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry? Is science compatible with religion? Is an author's view privileged in determining the meaning of a text? Essential questions of this type are common and perpetually arguable. We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are provisional or more varied than we might have imagined. In other words, we are liable to change our minds in response to reflection, different views, and rich experience concerning such questions as we go through life—and such changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial."

How many opportunities do we give our students to wrestle with open-ended, or at least not right-or-wrong type questions.  So often students are looking for the "right" answer.  Our society as a whole needs to learn how to have an intelligible debate on a topic, to listen to another argument and weigh its merits.  Our current political system is based on "I'm right, you're wrong" mentality that is plaguing our nation's collective ability to problem solve.  We want our politicians to be open to hearing arguments from both sides of an issue, but then chastise them if their voting record changes over time.  As educators we have an opportunity to help raise an electorate that is educated on both the issues and the need to be flexible in their thinking about these essential questions.  Changing your mind based upon well-reasoned arguments is respectable, not a sign of weakness.

The question I've been wondering lately is "How much are we telling students what to think versus asking students what they think?"  Are we giving students opportunities to wrestle with these essential questions?  So often we are pressed for time, we feel that as the teacher, we have to tell students the facts, tell them what to think.  How do we create more chances for students to exercise their own thinking, creating arguments based on evidence without compromising the amount of time we spend on making sure they comprehend the content?  I'd love to hear and see some examples of teachers pulling this off in their classrooms!