Normal School is How We Kill Curiosity, Awe, and Wonder

"Teacher Tom, grandma and grandpa slept in my house last night!"

She'd raised her hand the moment we sat down for circle time. I knew she had something exciting and important to say even if I had no idea what it was going to be. "They're going to be here a whole week!"

Her enthusiasm was genuine and, judging by the forest of hands that shot up in response to her words, inspirational. 

"My grandma slept at my house too!"

"They slept in my room and my brother and me got to camp in the living room."

"I flew on an airplane to go to my grandparents house in Iowa."

It was a perfect circle time as the children tag-teamed their collective story for the next 30 minutes, about grandparents, flying, travel, sleepovers, excitement, and love. Even as I followed the flow, however, I was aware that in many school environments, this entire conversation would be considered a distraction. The teacher would have sat down with an agenda for this group session -- self-imposed or otherwise -- and that girl's excitement and curiosity would have been chirpily dismissed: "That's nice, but today we're talking about fall leaves." 

Of course, it's possible that fall leaves will capture a child or twos fancy. It's also possible that the teacher is talented enough to inspire interest in fall leaves. But more often than not, the lesson learned by the children in normal school is that the things they are organically excited and curious about are immaterial, so why waste time wondering about things on your own? In this process, we teach children to replace self-motivated curiosity with paying attention to what the adult is saying for the purpose of securing grades. It's a sure way to kill curiosity.

Earlier this month, education/parenting author Alfie Kohn posted a piece on his blog entitled Less and Less Curious, in which he writes about researcher Susan Engel's attempts to study variations in children's curiosity rates in suburban elementary school students. What she found, however, was "an astonishingly low rate of curiosity in any of the classrooms we visited." 

As depressing as this is, it's not surprising. From the outside, we imagine schools as a place to get questions answered, to feed curiosity, to inspire excitement about learning, but in practice, the true legacy of normal schools is that we teach our children that their own curiosity is, at best, a distraction. Engel reports that in one instance a teacher actually told a genuinely curious child, "I can't answer questions right now. Now it's time for learning."

As Kohn puts it, the children "had learned not to bother wondering." He goes on: "For more than half a century, researchers have studied our desire to explore just for the sake of exploring, our itch to make sense of the unexpected. The eminent educator Seymour Sarason argued that education should be dedicated, above all else, to stimulating the "intellectual curiosity, awe, and wonder that a child possesses when he or she begins schooling." Or at least avoid killing it."

I propose that this be our profession's most sacred oath: "Do not kill curiosity, awe, and wonder." Yet that is exactly what happens every time a teacher steers the conversation back to fall leaves. 

It shouldn't surprise anyone that curiosity is associated with higher academic achievement, but that's almost beside the point. When I'm with children excitedly raising their hands to talk about grandmas and sleepovers, I know that my job is done. I know that I've created an environment in which curiosity, awe, and wonder are stimulated. And that's not just the secret to success in school, it's the ultimate secret to a successful life: one full of curiosity, awe, and wonder.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 14 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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