Awesome!

The difference between curiosity and awe and why both matter

Curiosity is rightly considered to be a valuable characteristic to have and seems to be intrinsic to humans, especially noticeable in children (not so much as we grow up, though).  I would like you to consider wonder and awe which are different from curiosity but also attract and hold our attention, and equally intrinsic to being human.

Notice how you want to alleviate curiosity, but you would like to perpetuate awe.

The reason for this is that curiosity is about quantitative development – gaining more knowledge or skill, whereas awe is about qualitative development – opening us up and putting our world and ourselves into question.  That is what awe does, it makes us humbler, changes our sense of self and sense of perspective.

Awe is a way to trigger perspectival knowing.

This gives a hint as to why ancient religious buildings are often so awe-inspiring.  They were designed to play their part in stimulating perspectival knowing, in helping us to transform ourselves, to develop qualitatively.

Cathedral at Chartres

As our world has secularised, perspectival knowing has been mostly lost.  Knowing now is largely associated with quantitative development, be that propositional knowing (a dog is a mammal, London is the capital of England) or procedural knowing, knowing how to do something (swim, play football, play an instrument).

Religions provided this type of knowing, but even they do so less and less (much religion has become a case of holding beliefs rather than engaging in transformative practice), then where are we to develop it?

Schools are the obvious place.  We encourage curiosity by not suppressing it and we stimulate awe in the same way.  Relationships that support students’ autonomy allow for the continued development of both curiosity and awe.

Having such relationships does not cost more, and, in fact, relationships that support student autonomy improve other things too, such as student and teacher engagement.

We must broaden our sense of what it means to learn.

You can download a pdf version of Why We Teach here.  Click here to sign up for a 60-minute Q&A via Zoom on 15th October titled: Why support students' autonomy?

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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