When my grandfather was in the last few days of his life, I remember him being remarkably alert. He knew what was coming, and maybe it was for that reason that he worked beyond his exhaustion to talk to me. I distinctly remember one of the last sentences he spoke to me. He said, “Sarah, don’t ever stop asking why.”
When I read W. Gardner Campbell’s piece, it brought me back to this moment with my grandfather, and to the moments that would follow our last day together. I would move forward with my life, graduate from high school, college, and eventually enroll in graduate school. However, it wasn’t until the last couple of years that I have begun to understand what he meant. Too often we find ourselves caught up in the whirlwind of competition, doing whatever it takes to stay ahead, and fail to look around and ask the important questions. We are often so focused on the answers, that we miss the joy and intrigue of the questions themselves.
Campbell says: “Our world is too complex, our problems too intricate, our opportunities too vast to settle for such narrow aspirations.” Looking back now, perhaps my grandfather had noticed the shift in the world around him. Perhaps he noticed how his grandchildren were being shuffled from one soccer tournament to the next, staying up late trying to finish homework, all the while distracted with our devices and blind to the world around us. Perhaps he saw that moment as an opportunity to send a message to me that would not fully come to light until a decade later. Regardless, his intention is clear to me now. The praise we receive as children is often tied closely to the value of our accomplishments-the glittering report card, the athletic ability or success in the band, the schools we are accepted into. In the midst of the struggle to attain the goals that will provide us with the praise we long for, we have simultaneously lost sight of the joy in the questions themselves.
I share the above story because I think it begs the following question: can we illicit curiosity in other people? And if so, how? The reason I find this question so perplexing is that, for me, it had a lot to do with time. I needed to mature to the point where I could fully reflect and be introspective before I truly became curious about the world around me. This could be a fairly difficult task for a professor teaching a classroom full of distracted freshman (as I once was).
I’m really looking forward to the discussion this week. I am especially excited to hear from the experienced teachers in the classroom on what they found to be the most effective strategies for encouraging curiosity.
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.” -Samuel Johnson
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