Curiosity

I've been thinking about the list of skills that I came across on the RRVWP blog yesterday.

Here they are.

Curiosity – the desire to know more about the world.
Openness – the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world.
Engagement – a sense of investment and involvement in learning.
Creativity – the ability to use novel approaches for generating, investigating, and representing ideas.
Persistence – the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects.
Responsibility – the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others.
Flexibility – the ability to adapt to situations, expectations, or demands.
Metacognition – the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes used to structure knowledge.



Just look at the first skill, curiosity.  It’s no secret that my students have more information at their fingertips (or given their smart phones, in the palm of their hands) than any generation before.  They are blasted with information from the moment they wake up until they go to sleep.  Maybe they have become numb to all the possibilities this information offers them to become curious about their outside world.  Or maybe all of the social media has indeed made them quite curious - but not about the world.  Instead it has made them curious about themselves!

I think there’s a lot of validity there.  But schools don’t do enough to foster curiosity either. In fact, I think sometimes they squash it.

Pablo Picasso said that every child is born an artist.  The trick is to remain an artist as they grow up.  The same has been said for children being scientists.  I think it could be true for every discipline. 

“The trick” is simply not to lose your curiosity.  Yet, I maintain schools tend to kill it.

What does it take to be curious? A willingness or encouragement to explore.  Yet, when in many schools are children encouraged to do this? 

I don’t know that it’s necessarily the schools’ faults either.  They were, after all, set up to reflect the need to turn out graduates who, for the most part, would work some kind of production line job.  No wonder schools resemble production lines.

When you do one or two things all day long in specific shifts, there’s little need for curiosity.  In fact, it might prove to be a detriment.  So students were conditioned to sit and listen to their knowledgeable teacher and take their notes and not question or explore. 

But the world has changed.

Schools are still transitioning.  I’m not sure the reform efforts, though, are assisting the transition.  NCLB has done some very good things.  But it’s rigid emphasis on test scores has had some unintended effects (the least of which is all the cheating scandals that are erupting.  Some of the minor ones happen to be teaching to the test and too much time devoted to test taking skills which might get a kid to pass the test but have no bearing on them later in life.  And there are numerous examples of elementary schools that basically shut down a week or two before the upcoming state test and everyone is devoted to refreshing test skills.  If they don’t do that, then schools have teachers whose areas aren’t tested, stop teaching their specific areas and actually start teaching the areas that are tests.  This actually happened to John Merrow’s daughter.  She teaches (if I recall correctly) Latin.  Two weeks before the big test, she had to stop teaching Latin and start focusing on reading comprehension skills.)

What might happen if a school stopped what it was doing and everyone focused on teaching (or modeling) curiosity?
I bet it would be a hell of a lot more interesting to the kids than refreshing reading strategies or test taking skills.

I think it’s fair to say that if we don’t kill curiosity we sure don’t encourage it as actively as we should.

Just look at us.  We had a devil of a time getting Wikipedia unblocked.  It’s kind of hard to be curious about the world when the world’s most popular and extensive encyclopedia is blocked. 

Even when Wikipedia was unblocked, there were scores of other sites - youtube, pretty much all blogs, iTunes store, podcasts, and countless other places - were still blocked.

I can’t tell you how frustrated my College Comp II kids grew when they tried to research here.  Blocked, blocked, blocked, blocked.  That doesn’t exactly encourage curiosity.  (I know they could head to books to find their information, but that’s not how this generation is wired.  Where my father would run to the neighbor’s to ask a question about something, I’d run to the library.  Now this generation runs to the internet.  Deal with it.)

Also, because of the tests, teachers have strict curriculum guidelines to meet.  No use delving into the Watergate scandal or the New Deal because we have to just skim through everything to meet the dozens of standards.

What would things look like if we called for kids to select one historical event that they are curious about and really delve in?

I have a feeling some would think, oh lord, what good does it do to have a kid just learn about the Watergate scandal and not about the Cold War or World War II or even the Civil War?

If students begin researching Watergate, for example, they are bound to learn about the Cold War too.

And how can you not learn about the Cold War without learning about World War II as well?  How can you not learn about WWII without learning about WWI?  And when you learn about WWI how can you not learn that it began with tactics and weapons that weren’t that different from those used in the Civil War?

Eventually, boom, you’ve just learned something about the Civil War (and I’d argue that the information students ‘uncover’ on their own about the Civil War will probably be retained more than what they are forced to ‘cover’ in school.)

We have the wrong view of knowledge and how our world works. 

History does not exist in a vacuum (nor does any other subject).  Sir Ken Robinson, Steven Johnson, Leon Botstein, James Burke (to name a few) have all proven this again and again. Knowledge is connected.  It doesn’t occur in a linear fashion.  It is often recursive and even organic.  Just log on to Burke’s “The Knowledge Web” or pick up Johnson’s “The Invention of Air” or watch one of his TED podcasts, and you’ll see what I mean.

WikipediaWikipedia.  That’s stupid.  But Wikipedia is a great place for students to start learning a very superficial understanding of any given subject. 

I know some are out there thinking, yeah, it’s just superficial.  But, again, let me speak from experience as a student, the only thing that kept me from gaining anything beyond a superficial understanding of any subject I was ever taught was my own curiosity. 

Just because we make students read a chapter on Gettysburg and make them memorize Lincoln’s famous address and then complete some fill in the blank worksheets and cross word puzzles on it, watch the movie, and even take a test on it, do we really think we’re giving them anything beyond a superficial understanding of it?

I propose allowing them to use not only Wikipedia but also valid sources (print and non-print) as well as social media (Twitter and blogs) to foster their curiosity of a subject.

Let’s test this theory. 

I google “Watergate”.  Of course, Wikipedia comes up first.  Click on that.

I get a quick synopsis of Watergate.  To learn more about that, I click on Richard Nixon.

While reading about Nixon, I see that he served in the Navy during the Pacific Theater in WWII.  Click on that.

I go to the page on the Pacific War. 

This war leads to the eventually atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Click on that.

The next thing that peeked my curiosity was “operation downfall” which meant the land and sea invasions of Japan after the U.S. had thoroughly bombed Japan with several more atomic bombs.

As I was reading this I found a link back to “Pacific War” this, of course, leads me back to the third hypertext I had originally clicked on.  Knowledge is recursive and not just linear.  The internet - namely Wikipedia - is perfectly designed for this.

On my second trip to “Pacific War,” I find that one of my favorite generals, MacArthur listed.  Clicking on that reveals that his father - for a brief period - was reassigned to the
Department of Dakota at St. Paul, Minnesota.  What a small world it is, isn’t it?

As MacArthur grew and finally got into West Point, we eventually at the War Department was instructed in open warfare rather than the more popular Trench Warfare.

Click on this and I’m in the midst of WWI.

This sends me to “No Man’s Land.”  (the area between each side’s trenches).  This leads me to one of my favorite poets, Wilfred Owen (one of the most popular “Trench Poets”) and his horrific poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est.”

As I’m reading about Owen - and discover that tragically one week before the armistice and the end of the fighting, he was shot in the head and killed.  Imagine that, one week from the end of the bloodshed and fighting and you are killed - I discover something I had forgotten (this again is how history and knowledge work) about his close friendship with the fellow trench poet Sigfried Sassoon. 

As I read about Sassoon, I see that many believe - because of his almost suicidally heroic acts during the war - that some believe he had a death wish.  After the war, many also believe he suffered from what was then known as “shell shock.”

While reading about shell shock, I see that it used to go by a different name early, especially during the Civil War (remember what I said about eventually getting all the way back to the Civil War by researching Watergate?).  It was known as “Soldier’s Heart.”

This has a personal connection to me, for it is the name of a novel that Jason, a friend and colleague of mine, uses in his history class at our middle school. 

The novel is by an author who actually attended the school in which I teach right now.  In fact, he probably sat in this very classroom where I am typing this!  That author is Gary Paulson.

Now given my knowledge on the author - he happens to be in our school’s hall of fame - I can see that the wikipedia entry on him at best is very vague and at worst has some false information.  Here is a great chance to apply my knowledge by editing the entry.

I’ll end my little test there - by applying my knowledge and expertise and actually editing something out there in the real world and contributing to it.

Not bad for a little test assignment, eh?

I’ll put that up against - “Read Ch. 18 and then complete the crossword puzzle on the historical figures and events covered in it before tomorrow’s lecture and notes” - any day.

But, of course, that little test assignment does not need to be relegated solely to Wikipedia.  One can focus also bring in other websites and sources (yes, even the textbook) as well.

Ultimately, students could keep their own blog in which they chronicle what they are most curious about (maybe something akin to the writer’s portfolio in Composition courses).