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This paper explores the uses of questions in the classroom, and isolates a unique kind of question, the "question-eliciting-question" (or QEQ), that poses a challenge for instructors leading classroom discussions. Statistics show that teachers spend large portions of their instructional time asking questions. While pedagogical theory promotes the use of "higher-order" questions because they purportedly promote complex and critical thinking, the questions instructors ask in practice inadequately fulfill this goal. Part of the problem is the way we have come to think about questions and the normative uses we make of them. They are essentially, as a major school of philosophy of language claims, commands. Commands demand mere answers. QEQs, however, are not something to be answered, but we ask and share with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]