Today we begin a new unit, which will culminate in not one but  two projects, an Annotated Bibliography (Unit 2) and  a written project based on research for Unit 3. You will receive more on both later.

For today’s session, I want you to think about your own experience with curiosity.

Brainstorm: What do you remember being excited about learning? What do you wish you could learn about now?

Then consider, how you have independently approached learning new topics in contrast with how curiosity is or isn’t approached in many traditional educational settings. As a student, you have experience? What do you think  teachers and educators could  do better?

Then, read and take notes on two texts:

TEXT 1: SCHOOLS ARE KILLING CURIOSITY

“‘Schools are Killing Curiosity’: Why We need to Stop Telling Children to Shut Up and Learn.” The Guardian, 28 Jan 2020.

In this text, you will find the following argument:

“Promoting curiosity is a foundation for early learning that we should be emphasising more when we look at academic achievement.”

You will also find an analysis of how schools often fail to approach learning as an experience of developing curiosity.

 

TEXT 2: “A TALK TO TEACHERS”

In this second text, a classical treatise on education by the brilliant and crucially important African-American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, offers Baldwin’s advice to teachers from 1963. This essay shows its years in terms of referencing politics of the early 60s, some of which are still painfully relevant now. Keep this in mind as you read, but also think of what he is saying to teachers and the urgency of his message. Take notes. Ask questions of the text. What do you agree with? What challenges you?

Baldwin, James. “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin,1963. https://www.spps.org/cms/lib010/MN01910242/Centricity/Domain/125/baldwin_atalktoteachers_1_2.pdf

Among many points Baldwin raises in the article is the following:

The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

This is only one section of the many  quotes I could pull from this text. But, relevant to our conversation about curiosity, why is asking questions and being encouraged to ask questions of what is right and what is wrong so crucially important to ourselves and our very identity? What questions do you have? What might they say about your growing consciousness of your own identity? What have you examined in the society in which you have been educated?