Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Stones into Schools:
1. If you've read Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson's first book, how does this compare? Do you find it as inspiring or as dramatic as the first book?
2. Again, if you've read Three Cups, in what ways does Mortenson seem to have changed. Consider, for instance, the effect that becoming a celebrity has had on his efforts. How would you say Mortenson comes across in this book?
3. Mortenson talks about the Taliban as a "ring of men with Kalashnikovs who help to sustain the grotesque lie that flinging battery acid into the face of a girl who longs to study arithmetic is somehow in keeping with the teachings of the Koran." Talk about the ways in which Mortenson's schools— especially his belief in educating girls—challenges that repressive culture. Why in his view is it important to educated girls?
4. What role does the US military play in the book? How—and why—does Mortenson change his views about the US war effort in Afghanistan?
5. How has Mortenson's work affected US foreign policy and military strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere? What have we as a nation, as a world community, learned from him?
6. Why is Mortenson angered by both Pervez Musharraf (then-president of Pakistan) and Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, when both praise his work?
7. Talk about how Mortenson and his local compeers cut through bureaucracy to accomplish their goals.
8. Although deeply inspiring, is Mortenson's vision for peace—through education and literacy—realistic or naive?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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