FROM THE HEADMASTER How to stay curious We all know that curiosity, properly used, is the start-up gas that fires the mind. Indeed, it gets pride of place as the first of three features of the The third stage, the one we are so interested in at Newington, Newington ‘Inspired Mind’ – curiosity, open-mindedness and is what he calls intellectual curiosity – when all of those brilliant rigour. But it is almost a cliché that kids are curious when they firecrackers of random questions are shaped, matured, honed, and are young, but then something happens, and it can so easily drain directed towards a problem or an issue. It is sustained and joyous in away. So – what the hell is happening and how can we keep our equal measure, a bit like taking all of the attractive explosive force curiosity, both for our kids and for ourselves. I’ve got to admit, I am of the firecrackers and packing it into a single, creative detonation selfish about this as it is my ambition to be an intensely curious that can fire a rocket or move a mountain. Dewey writes evocatively 80-year-old, reading voraciously, listening hard to people and about how easily this curiosity is lost: ‘Some lose it in indifference or hopefully doing an undergraduate science degree. carelessness; others in a frivolous flippancy; many escape these evils only to become incased [sic] in a hard dogmatism which is equally First things first. What is happening? John Dewey, the father of fatal to the spirit of wonder (hello political polarisation). Some education theory, gives us some clues. He says that people go are so taken up with routine as to be inaccessible to new facts and through three stages of curiosity. The first is physical curiosity, problems. Others retain curiosity only with reference to what concerns where babies scoot around, drop things repeatedly (to see if things their personal advantage in their chosen career. With many, curiosity come back), stick everything in their mouth, get up, fall down and is arrested on the plane of interest in local gossip and in the fortunes basically fill their world with visceral and rejuvenating wonder. The of their neighbors [sic]’ (hello social media). (https://brocku.ca/ second stage is social curiosity where the child starts asking the MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1910a/Dewey_1910_c.html; if you are incessant ‘why’ and ‘how’. Almost all kids have this. Why does curious enough to read the whole thing.) this car move, what’s an engine, how can a lump of metal create power, how can wheels go up a hill, why is Uncle Pete laughing, why So, how to keep your curiosity, whether you are a 15-year-old does Grandma look sad, etc., etc., etc. John Dewey says of it, ‘The about to embark on your HSC, a 45-year-old about to embark on search [in social curiosity] is not for a law or principle, but only for the second half of your career or an 80-year-old about to start an a bigger fact.’ undergraduate science degree? Ian Leslie, who wrote the book Curious , has seven ways. (Continued on page 2).1 Mr Michael Parker teaching a Year 7 Philosophy and Religious Studies class in March.