Clever Question

IN MY 2nde history class this afternoon we were in the middle of a discussion about the value and limitations of historical sources when I got an interesting question from one of my students. I had just asked the class to imagine they had an assignment where they were to write a historical profile of me (yes, me!) As an exercise, I asked each student to write 5 questions they would ask me in order to find out relevant information that might help with this kind of assigment. My goal was to help the students understand the importance of not only asking questions when doing research, but asking the right questions. Simple enough.

In general the questions the students asked followed the pattern I expected -- fairly straight forward with the goal of learning basic information about me. I had questions like: where were you born? what is your birthday? are you married? how many children do you have? where did you attend university? All good, foundational kinds of questions. But about 10 questions in I called on a student in the front row and his question was a bit different. His question was:

What are your wife's major shortcommings?

Now that's thinking outside the box. This kid's going to make a good historian!
CJS

Answers to above questions, in order: Takoma Park, MD; June 14; yes; 3; Andrews University (B.A.), Johns Hopkins University (M.A.), no chance I'm answering the last one.