“Why, Mum, why?” According to my mother, that was my constant refrain when I was young. I guess it matched my grandfather’s nickname for me: “Busy One.” Being busy meant I encountered many things that made me curious. My parents cultivated curiosity in me from a young age even if I drove my mother crazy with my questions. Cultivating a garden requires careful preparation, tools, and seeds; cultivating curiosity is no different.
To cultivate curiosity, preparation is required before anything will grow. Just like garden soil needs to be rich with nutrients and tilled to be ready for seeds, a curious mind is prepared by fostering attentiveness. Encourage your children to notice things. What do you talk about as you drive around town? Point out unique architecture or a business that you’ve not visited. Notice the wildflowers along the highway. Wonder out loud about where that airplane might be headed. Show them it is okay to not know everything and then show them how to find out the answers to what you are wondering about. Modeling curiosity prepares children to be curious.
Just as every garden starts with a seed, curiosity begins with a question. It may be simple: “Why does this happen?” or “What if I tried this?” To plant the seed of curiosity, we need an environment that welcomes wonder and values questions. Throughout this year with our theme of How to Think, Andrew Pudewa has returned again and again to the topic of asking questions to promote thinking. Sally Ride, the first female American astronaut, made the connection between questions, curiosity, and science. “Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.”
We cannot ask questions without words. Words can be curious things themselves. When an unknown word appears in your reading, do you look it up? Do you keep a dictionary handy? One of my favorite pieces of furniture in our home is my grandmother’s dictionary stand with her enormous 1950s-era dictionary on top and then the small shelf below with a thesaurus, a book of quotations, and other reference books. These well-worn books are a testimony to her love of crossword puzzles and her curious mind. From questions to answers, words are like the germ of the seed that grows into knowledge.
Just like a tiny seedling, knowledge needs patience and room to grow. The best garden will have sunlight, healthy soil, and water. Books will always be my first choice for fertilizing curiosity. Many well-loved book characters model curiosity even if it does sometimes lead to trouble—Curious George, Scout Finch, Ramona Quimby, Homer Price, Anne Shirley, Paddington Bear, Claudia Kincaid, Ralph S. Mouse, Nathaniel Bowditch, Stuart Little, Opal Buloni, Meg Murray, Laney Vanderbeeker, and Eben McAllister. The list could fill this blog post. Are there unfamiliar names in that list that spark your curiosity? Books also provide infinite things to wonder about—Where did that take place? What kind of food is mentioned? Did that really happen, or did the author add to the facts of the story? Andrew Pudewa encourages parents and teachers to use encyclopedias to cultivate curiosity.
In addition to books, experiences such as museums and zoos, national parks and sculpture parks, nature trails and living history villages act like fertilizer for the mind. Even small efforts to explore new topics or perspectives can keep curiosity alive and vibrant. However, just as weeds can choke a young plant, certain habits can stifle curiosity. Rushing through your day and not stopping to wonder can keep minds from growing. Allow time with nothing to do. Boredom is an essential ingredient for curiosity. Children need time to be bored and wonder, to play and explore without structure. Give young minds time, space, and freedom, and curiosity will flourish.
“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity” (Eleanor Roosevelt). Since we don’t have fairy godmothers to give curiosity, we have to cultivate it. This takes work, but the harvest of the habit of lifelong learning is worth it. When our kids know stuff and know how to learn more, we have given them the gift of being able to make conversation about more than the weather or the day’s news. My oldest has flown the nest, but he will often send me a quick text or a picture of something curious when he is traveling for business. His job takes him to the same city on a regular basis, and he has made it a goal to visit a different museum or park each time he is there. We will never be able to teach our children everything or read every book before they graduate. Cultivating curiosity will give them the lifelong desire and habits to keep learning, reading, and growing and perhaps to also pass these on to the next generation.
by Danielle Olander
