Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight Questions

HIF Questions Serve Several Important Purposes

1.  They help you know how much young people understand of what
     they are learning.
2.  They require students to think about and articulate the ideas they
     are learning.
3.  They provide you with an opportunity to expand upon and clarify
     ideas they may not have fully understood.
4.  And, most importantly, they help young people develop the    
     invaluable qualities of hindsight, insight, and foresight.

Hindsight Questions
Hindsight Questions are used to help young people learn from experience. We want them to learn from their own experience and, perhaps more importantly, we want them to learn from the experiences of others.

All too many youth go through life as if no one has ever lived before them, repeating mistakes of the past, and suffering what could have been avoided had they paid more attention to the experiences of others. Learning from the experiences of others, whether by observing people and events in real life, through literature, or in some other way is an inexpensive way to learn lessons that can be both painful and costly to learn first hand.

But, even first hand learning can be profitable, if learning takes place. Unfortunately, many seem unable to learn, even from their own experience.

Hindsight questions are designed to help young people to develop this ability.

Insight Questions
Insight questions are designed to help students seek for a deeper level of understanding by looking beyond the obvious to consider things that are more obscure and less well understood without further investigation or thought.

Insight Questions are used to help young people understand why things are the way they are so they can know better what to do about them. Young people today are confronted with a world facing many complex and difficult challenges—the solutions of which will require every ounce of wisdom and understanding they will be able muster.

There are few things that can be of more benefit to the upcoming generation than to possess the quality of insight.

Foresight Questions
Foresight Questions are used to help young people learn how to anticipate the probable or likely consequences of their choices.

Our daily papers are full of stories of people in positions, both high and low, who have made choices without having considered the possible, even probable, consequences of those choices and the potential unhappiness associated with them.

If we can help young people develop the discipline of looking back at the past to see what has happened, to look at the nature of what it is they are contemplating doing, and to anticipate the possible outcomes of things they want to do, they will be in a far stronger position to make important choices in their lives.