Why girls hold back from asking simple questions: a teacher’s observation and small tips
It was 20 minutes into 4th grade math last month, and I’d just finished walking through three examples of equivalent fractions on the whiteboard. Kids were bent over their exit tickets, pencils scratching, the soft hum of a working classroom filling the room. I noticed Mia twisting the end of her braid over and over, her paper dotted with half-erased pencil marks, not a single answer written down. I knelt beside her desk and asked if she was stuck. She shook her head quickly, tucked her paper closer to her chest, and said, “No, it’s fine. I get it.” Ten minutes later, when everyone else turned in their tickets, she pushed hers across my desk still half-blank. I asked again, quiet enough no one else could hear: “Is there something you don’t understand that you want to ask?” She mumbled, “It’s a stupid question. It doesn’t matter.”
That exchange led me to erase the math problems from the board and write a line in big marker at the end of class: Just a simple question for all girls — boys can answer too, if you want. How many of you have not asked a question in class this week because you worried it was too simple, too obvious, or would make you sound silly? I asked for a show of hands. Out of 12 girls in my class, 10 raised their hands. Out of 13 boys, 3 raised theirs. Javi, one of the boys who raised his hand, spoke up: “I ask dumb jokes all the time, but last week I didn’t get what ‘theme’ meant in reading and I didn’t ask. I thought everyone else got it except me.”
After class, I walked to the teacher’s lounge and mentioned the result to Sarah, the 5th grade teacher down the hall. She nodded immediately, saying her highest performing student, a girl named Lila, comes to her desk after school every single day to ask all the questions she wouldn’t ask in front of the class. I thought back to my own 7th grade year, when I couldn’t figure out my locker combination for the first three weeks of school and never asked anyone for help. I just loitered by my locker until another kid walked by and offered to open it, over and over, until I finally memorized it by accident. I’d been so sure everyone else got it right on the first try, that I’d look dumb if I admitted I couldn’t do it.
This isn’t a problem of girls being inherently shyer or boys being inherently more confident, that’s the lazy take I see too often. It’s that we all absorb a quiet message from a young age: capable, smart people don’t need to ask simple questions. That message sticks harder to girls for a hundred small, cumulative reasons, but it touches boys too, as Javi showed. And you don’t fix it with a big assembly or a lecture about “being more confident.” I’ve tried a few small, concrete changes that have moved the needle more than any big intervention I’ve tested.
First, I stopped opening question time with “Any questions?” That phrase feels like a test, like if you have a question, you weren’t paying attention. Now I always start question time with my own “silly” simple question first. After I teach a new concept, I say something like, “First off, my question for you all: I always mix up when we capitalize the word ‘mom’ vs when we don’t, can someone remind me?” Or “I messed this up on morning work today, so remind me — how do we know if a fraction is greater than one half again?” It models that even people who’ve been doing this for 20 years have simple questions, and there’s no shame in it.
Second, when a kid asks a simple question, I don’t make a big deal out of it. I used to say “That’s such a great question!” which sounds nice, but it actually signals that it was surprising a question that basic was worth asking. Now I just say “Good question, let’s go over that again for everyone” and move right into answering, no extra fanfare. It takes the weight out of asking.
For parents, there’s a small shift you can make at home too. Instead of asking your kid “What did you learn today?” when they get home from school, ask “What question did you hold back from asking this week?” When they tell you, don’t say “Oh that’s not a silly question at all!” that just dismisses their feeling. Instead, share your own small, relatable story. Say something like “Oh I get that. I was at the grocery store yesterday and I was too embarrassed to ask where the oat milk was, so I walked around for 10 minutes looking for it.” Normalizing the awkwardness of asking simple questions takes away its power.
A couple of weeks after that first day with Mia, she raised her hand mid-math block and asked, “Wait, is there ever a time we don’t multiply the top and bottom by the same number? Is that against the rules?” I just said “Good question, let’s talk about that” and walked through it. After class, she hung back by my desk and said she’d been wondering that for three days, but never had the guts to say it out loud before.
It’s not a perfect fix. I still see kids staring at their desks, twisting their braids or hoodie strings when they’re stuck and won’t speak up. Some kids still come after class to ask the questions they wouldn’t ask in front of everyone, and that’s okay — it’s still a step. I don’t think this is a problem that ever goes away entirely; I still hold back from asking simple questions at staff meetings sometimes. But that first day, when I asked that silly little open question out loud, it put the thing we all hide out in the open. Last week, a 3rd grade girl dropped off a form for me, and heard me open question time with my own silly fraction question, and she piped up from the doorway: “Wait, I have that same question. Can I hear the answer too?” That’s small, but it’s enough for now. I’ll keep starting with my silly question, and see what happens next.
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