Asking Why?

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I recently decided that the cello is my favourite orchestral instrument. I didn’t arrive at this conclusion intentionally—it revealed itself to me. It had never occurred to me that I needed to decide, but now I know: the cello is my favourite.

And now comes the more difficult task—to articulate why.

It is one thing to claim admiration for something, and another to explain it. This is where the critical aspect begins: the qualitative why, the perspective behind the preference.

We ask our students “why” all the time. Yet when we, as teachers, are asked the same question, we often fall short. We tell ourselves we don’t have time for such indulgence.

As teachers, asking why is essential. The why makes us visible, even to ourselves. It reminds us that we matter. Through our own lens, we have the agency to shape how we see and engage with the world.

To ask why is to form an opinion. And to form an opinion requires vocabulary, knowledge, and understanding.

To explain why I love the cello requires an understanding of music. To have played it would deepen that explanation further. But that’s not really the point.

The “why” builds a framework for agency.

Asking why is physical. The more we engage our own doing and becoming, the more we uncover our “why.”

Sitting in the front row, I didn’t just hear the cello play —I experienced it.

The grinding tension of the bow in a war-inspired piece. The playful pizzicato and call-and-response in Weinberg. The lyrical, almost fragile dialogue of Beethoven. The blazing intensity of Shostakovich. The raw physicality—the grunts, the strain, the intellect—of the performer entwined with their instrument.

And in that moment, I discovered a new “why.” The cello is my favourite instrument because it has the facility to bring to life (for me) a raw representation of life’s joy and struggles.

And yet, how often do we give educators the space to explore and express their own “why”?

If we expect teachers to lead students, they must first be able to lead themselves. They must first have the time to engage and justify their own opinions and beliefs, their own whys. This may seem dangerous to some. However, letting teachers have an opinion is the first step to providing the fuel necessary for an educator to keep asking this why, an essential ingredient in the education of their students.