The Disappearance of Curiosity and Questioning

Considering the state of things, one could devote a lot of time trying to find a reason and ultimately, a solution.  Is it our education system or parenting?  Is it our indulgent and self-congratulating culture that revels in the importance of the inane or worse, the repugnant?  Where does our mental acuity begin to erode?  All the aforementioned conditions can hasten the erosion and the fact that we champion it does not help.  However, the breaking down begins with something basic – something we are naturally inclined to do but are incessantly taught, explicitly and implicitly, not to do.  We may be living at a time when we are losing our curiosity and questioning spirit.

Like most things that get me thinking, my original observations begin with my students.  They are nice enough, many with a helpful spirit.  However, I’m also faced with the problem that some of the students are not interesting.  They get good grades and have a way of engaging adults.  However, over the last fifteen years, they’ve been instructed by parents to focus only on grades and they’ve learned from schools that nothing is important unless it will be on a test or can be used toward their future monetary success.  Ergo, I have a classroom full of well-manicured receptacles. 

So, what is the ramification of this phenomenon?  There is a general lack of curiosity to ask questions and a willingness to endure questions.  Here is how it manifest itself:

Teacher:  How did we get involve in the Spanish-Cuban conflict?
Student:  We sent the USS Maine to Cuba to protect American interests (almost verbatim from the textbook).
Teacher:  True but why were we there?
Student:  To protect American interests.
Teacher:  From whom?  Who was provoking the U.S.?
Student:  Spanish?
Teacher:  Why would the Spanish antagonize the Americans?  They don’t want us involved.
Student:  Cubans? 
Teacher:  Why would the Cubans provoke the Americans?
Student:  So that we would join them?
Teacher:  Why would we join those who just attacked us?
Student:  (Shrugged shoulders) I don’t know. 
 

That would be an exchange from a more diligent student.  Most students would have folded like a cheap lawn chair not long after the second question.  As the student was reading at home, he or she read it without consideration for what they were reading.  They do not ask questions or otherwise, they would have come to those questions themselves.  Current high schoolers (it does go well beyond them, however) are not trying to obtain knowledge, they are trying to retain information until the test.  They are searching for grades (something that does not extend beyond the class or subject) and not enlightenment or understanding.

Where previous generations embraced questions as the pathway to knowledge, students today see it as badgering.  They haven’t considered the questions themselves and would not have the confidence in their thought processes if they had.  So, when confronted with a series of questions, they shut down and realize that what is being pushed for might not be that “important” long term (meaning, tests).   

Education is inundated with buzz words like “21^st century skills” to ready our students for jobs that “we are not even aware of yet” – certain they will help to reach our hidden destination?  Neil Postman suggested that our intellectual future lies in leaning on the best of our past.  If students can develop some intellectual stamina, treasure knowledge over information, if they know how to think, if they know how to problem solve (which requires a great deal of curiosity and questioning), it does not matter what appears in the future.  These are skills that can transcend all future obstacles.  Instead, we prep them for tests that indicate nothing of substance and suggest that everything not on the test is not important.  

Socrates once wrote about those who “will be of tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”  We cannot accept the emphasis on information which does nothing to enhance knowledge and thinking.  We can’t abide with the emphasis on the need for “critical thinking skills” without a consideration for or appreciation of the process required to get there.  The more we dumb things down, the more precipitous the decline in curiosity or questioning.  It is a trend in desperate need for a reversal.