Curiosity

If curiosity killed the cat, what killed the curiosity? I've been curious about curiosity and lack thereof recently...the contrast between the insatiable wonder of 3 1/2 year old James and the intellectual lethargy of many (fortunately far from all!) BSU undergraduate students is painfully stark. I have taken to asking students about this constrast and the results of this informal 'survey' are most depressing. There seems to be a fairly widespread belief that life is easier and simpler (thus somehow better!) if one doesn't think or wonder too much. In several classes, I have posed the question, "What's the opposite of boring?" Overwhelmingly, the favored as answer has been "Fun" with "Interesting" typically coming in distant third or fourth, most often also behind "Entertaining" and "Exciting." I'll grant that pursuing interesting ideas requires a concerted effort and often leads away from comfortable certainty toward further (interesting!) questions and more work -- but it is also clear (at least in my worldview) that this is precisely what makes life rich and interesting. How can anyone be bored when navigating a fecund and mysterious terrain of perpetual questions only occasionally illuminated by the lightning of rewarded curiosity? Sadly, many students seem to hold deeply to an acquired conviction that learning must be fun, first and foremost; the idea that learning might ever be "hard work" (sorry GWB) seems totally outside the experience of a majority of students. This expectation of instant educational gratification seems to me to be one of the most troubling indictments of K-12 public education -- not exactly sure where it comes from our how to fix it but certain that it is a cultural pathology. Learning is often rather tedious and even frustrating work -- it is the fruits of learning that provide enjoyment. /dps