Friday, November 14, 2014

Curiosity and Obedience

As a relatively new parent, I have been amazed at the insatiable curiosity of our son (19-months old). Like most parents, I think my son is special, but I see this curiosity in most children around his age. These young children want to investigate everything and will try anything. They make a lot of mistakes, but they are constantly learning and they seem to love learning.

Curiosity comes quite naturally. Obedience, however, needs to be taught. 

As a professor, I wish I could bottle my son’s curiosity and feed it to my students.

As a parent, I wish my young son obeyed as well as (most of) my students do. 

But I wonder, do we sometimes trade curiosity for obedience? Sir Ken Robinson has spoken about the problem of schools killing creativity. (Creativity and curiousity are related, I think). As a parent and as a professor, his talk is challenging.

If you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original…we are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst things you can make. We are educating people out of their creative capacities…Picasso once said this, he said that “all children are born artists; the challenge is to remain an artist as we grow up”…we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather we get educated out of it.   

Sir Ken Robinson's talk is somewhat depressing, because much of it rings true. His talk has been watched over 29 million times. Unfortunately, I couldn’t clearly identify his proposed solution. Maybe I need to dig into his more detailed work.

How do we teach discipline (which may be a better goal than mere obedience) without killing curiosity and creativity? I do not think discipline and curiosity are mutually exclusive, but they seem to be in tension a fair bit. As a parent, I am already terrified that my son will lose his curiosity. As a professor, I want to help my students recapture theirs.   

Any thoughts would be appreciated. 

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2014/11/curiosity-and-obedience.html

Business School, Haskell Murray, Law School, Teaching | Permalink

Comments

I would be interested in reading more about this apparent tension. I am sure some academic has approached and answered relevant questions. . . . My gut tells me that one can learn obedience without stifling curiosity. The key is to channel the curiosity into appropriate times and spaces. In a sense, I think we are all trying to do this in and outside our classrooms every day. Legal reasoning demands obedience, but its successful use may depend on the creativity and insight that results from curiosity.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post.

Posted by: joanheminway | Nov 17, 2014 3:15:22 PM

Agreed. As mentioned, I don't think they are mutually exclusive. That said, much of my education, sadly, focused on parroting back to the instructor what he or she had said in class. Especially at the much younger levels, obedience and memorization seem to rule, and students who rock the boat are often punished or graded down. Of course, discipline is needed, even In creative fields, but I do wonder if our education system sufficiently values and encourages student creativity. Some of it may simply be a class size issue. It can be difficult to allow students to explore and give individualized feedback (on different projects) with large classes.

Posted by: Haskell | Nov 18, 2014 9:25:32 AM

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