Curiosity

It's extremely difficult to articulate what I've been ruminating over in the course of the past week or so. However, I'll try to sketch it out.

This week, there's been a number of times whereby the ability of my students to answer seemingly straightforward questions has severely diminished. Answers to questions, for example, "why is McDonald's so popular?" and "why do people work overtime?" were drawn from a supposedly innate skill/instinct: the ability to ponder why things are they way that they are. That is... to demonstrate curiosity and to be able to formulate a response which signals a capacity for intuitive reflection - about one's place in the world and the surrounds in which we live.

Generally, the response is: "Teacher, I don't know, I've never thought about it." Whereby its clear to me that my students presume that I expect an immediacy to their response, one which indicates the so-called "right" answer. Clearly a manifestation of the Taiwanese-system of education, no less.

I'm reminded of one of the most confronting conversations I've had, here in Taiwan. Some months ago, one of my students, a mother of an 8 year old girl, said: "My child went to school, full of curiousity, full of questions about the world. She annoyed me each day with her questions. After a few months at school, though... Where the teacher would chide her for asking her questions... I saw her curiosity go away. One year later, I've noticed the difference. She doesn't ask me questions anymore."

It's so utterly confronting - that curiosity, interest, keenness, a desire or a thirst for knowledge - can, in some contexts, be seen as a totally foreign ideal - an ideal with no innat value...