Methods for teaching "Interest & Curiosity"

Interest & Curiosity

Ah, to see the world through the eyes of a child, where there is wonder in all things and where boredom or routine do not exist.

Adult Description

I had been a student in Boston for two years. I loved the city and thought I knew it pretty well. Then a visitor came to spend the weekend with us on his way through the city. "What do you want to do?" I asked. "See Boston!" he said. I took him to my favorite places: the Wharf, Hay Market Square, the Freedom Trail. His eyes were wide the whole day. His comments were of fascination, even awe. "That really happened here?" His questions were questions of genuine interest, questions of history, of geography, of personality, of joyful curiosity. I couldn't answer most of them because I had never asked them. In those days I think I saw more reflected in his eyes than I had seen in two years through my own eyes.

I thought I loved Boston, but my friend enjoyed the tour, enjoyed the day, the people, the smells, the feelings, more than I had the first time I had seen them or at any time since. The joy that I saw in his face was the involved, absorbed, wrapped-up, forget-himself-and-his-own-problems joy of curiosity and of interest. He had, preserved within him, a joy that nearly all small children possess and nearly all adults lose.

Child Description

I remember sitting once, off to the side in a busy shopping mall, looking at passing people -- watching to see who was watching. The adults were preoccupied with their jobs, their problems, themselves. Their eyes never met mine. Their eyes saw only what was necessary to navigate through the crowded corridor.

But the children saw everything. Each child looked straight at me for at least a moment, and for a moment at everything. Their eyes and ears were receptors, taking in all the data, seeing, hearing, questioning.

It is no wonder that we learn as much in our first five years as in the rest of our lives. We see more, feel more. We are born with a natural and joyful curiosity and interest. What happens to it? Where did those adults drop it? When would those children lose theirs?

One study showed that babies spend one-fifth of their waking hours in motionless, focused gazing, simply figuring things out with their eyes. Their minds are so malleable, so impressionable! Parents can perhaps change their children's minds more, for better or for worse, than they can change either their bodies or their spirits.

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