Wonder-Full Education

The Centrality of Wonder in Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum

Kieran Egan, Annabella I. Cant, Gillian Judson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135051051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

For many children much of the time their experience in classrooms can be rather dull, and yet the world the school is supposed to initiate children into is full of wonder. This book offers a rich understanding of the nature and roles of wonder in general and provides multiple suggestions for to how to revive wonder in adults (teachers and curriculum makers) and how to keep it alive in children. Its aim is to show that adequate education needs to take seriously the task of evoking wonder about the content of the curriculum and to show how this can routinely be done in everyday classrooms. The authors do not wax flowery; they present strong arguments based on either research or precisely described experience, and demonstrate how this argument can be seen to work itself out in daily practice. The emphasis is not on ways of evoking wonder that might require virtuoso teaching, but rather on how wonder can be evoked about the everyday features of the math or science or social studies curriculum in regular classrooms.

Part I

The Nature of Wonder and its Educational Uses

1

Our Hearts Leap Up

Awakening Wonder Within the Classroom

Laura Piersol

Exploring the forest with a group of grade 6 students, I notice a cluster of boys grouped around a spruce tree talking with fervour. “Call her over!” I hear one boy say. I walk toward them. “Come! Look what we found!!” another one shouts to me. I arrive at the foot of the tree and they push back some branches. There are small dark objects delicately placed on many of the boughs. “They look like elf ears,” one boy remarks. “Hey, there are some on this tree too!” a girl shouts from 50 feet away. “Here too!” another boy calls from down the winding path. “What are they?”, “How did they get here?”, “Can I eat it?”… I have no idea. We are filled with wonder.

In my practice, I have continually experienced the importance of “wonder” as a learning tool. Wonder can be a hard concept to articulate. For me, wonder begins as a wave of “surprise caused by something unexpected or unfamiliar”¹ or by an example of amazing achievement. At first, I delight in this feeling and briefly hold it like a worn stone, tracing my fingers over it as it lays fixed before me. I am momentarily frozen by the feeling that I am holding. As Albert Schweitzer writes, “If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness” (1969, p. 115). Yet, the moment I begin to contemplate it, I move from holding the wonder to letting it hold me; it shape-shifts from a noun to a verb through me. I now embody feelings of doubt, curiosity and amazement. The world grows larger and I feel like a stone being worn in waves of possibility. I realize that I still have much to learn.

The fact that wonder is an essential part of learning is by no means a new insight. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales reportedly fell into a well while wondering at the stars above. Think of all that he learned after that! However, in our education system today the concept is still almost completely absent. This is extremely problematic because, as Rachel Carson points out, “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in” (1965, p. 45). How can we foster this type of learning if as teachers we have forgotten how to find excitement in a blade of grass or inspiration in a handful of soil?² There are two great thinkers that can help us in this regard.

In this paper, I will trace the insights of Plato and William Wordsworth regarding this concept of wonder. Although wonder is defined differently by both writers, it is of utmost importance to both of them. I will then argue that a sense of wonder is particularly lacking in the current educational system and explain how this greatly impedes learning. In conclusion, I will outline useful ideas from Plato and Wordsworth in terms of how and why we need to reintegrate this concept into education.

Plato: Humble Wandering as Wondering

Plato stated that “wonder is the beginning of philosophy” (Theaetetus, 155d). Aristotle echoed this claim: “For men were first led to study philosophy, as indeed they are today, by wonder” (Metaphysics I, 982b 12–13). The “wonder”that both Plato and Aristotle refer to is a sense of “puzzlement” (aporia) and humility within learning (Matthews, 1997). In many of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates questions fellow-citizens in such a way as to leave them increasingly perplexed, as illustrated in this passage from the dialogue Meno:

Socrates, I used to be told, before I knew you, that you were always doubting yourself and making others doubt; and now you are casting your spells over me, and I am simply getting bewitched and enchanted … my soul and my tongue are really torpid, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons—and very good ones they were, as I thought—at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. (80ab)

Socrates responds by stating: “I perplex others not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself” (80c). This admission of his state of aporia demonstrates his own humility within the process of seeking knowledge. Again, in another dialogue, Theaetetus, when reaching a point of confusion, states that he is “lost in wonder when I think of all these things” (Theaetetus, 155c).

The “wonder” that Socrates has elicited in others as well as in himself is the sense of knowing one’s ignorance before the vast scope of potential knowledge; wonder at how very little is known compared to what can be known and the humbling realization that what was thought to be known is no longer adequate. At the end of Theaetetus, Socrates summarizes the point of this philosophical wondering/wandering:

Then supposing you should ever henceforth try to conceive afresh, Theaetetus, if you succeed, your embryo thoughts will be the better as a consequence of today’s scrutiny, and if you remain barren, you will be gentler and more agreeable to your companions, having the good sense not to fancy to know what you do not know. For that, and no more, is all that my art can effect. (210BC)

According to Plato, philosophy begins in this state of puzzlement/aporia. Yet, the etymology of “aporia” means “lacking” a “path” or a “way”. This seems disastrous, for if the pursuit of knowledge is built around this term does it not imply that all learners will end up perplexed and lost? It is important that the state of perplexity that Socrates induces through his questioning is not one that is debilitating. Too much puzzlement could lead to an overwhelmed and frustrated feeling bordering on relativism.

To ensure that this humility isn’t defeating, Plato divides human nature into two parts: one side philosophical, the other “spirited” (courageous). He then compares these two principles to the strings of an instrument that need to be “relaxed or drawn tight until they are duly harmonized” (The Republic, Bk. 3, 412). The philosophical beginnings of wonder need the courage to abandon preconceptions and then to embrace strange, new ideas. On the other hand, to avoid being brutish, our courage needs to be tamed by the wisdom that comes from philosophical wondering.

In harmony with courage, wonder becomes an essential step in learning, as the very state of puzzlement is what leads to a longing for the truth. As Adeimantus says to Socrates in The Republic:

When you talk in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers … and at the end of the discussion they are found to have sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former notions appear to be turned upside down. (Bk. 6, 487BC)

By inducing this state in others and through his own frequent admission of being in a perplexed state himself throughout various dialogues, Socrates demonstrates that indeed to know what it is that we do not know is the humbling, courageous first step of true knowledge. Aristotle points out this process in his Metaphysics: “Now, a man who is perplexed and wonders believes himself to be ignorant … they philosophized in order to avoid ignorance” (1, 982b, pp. 18-20). It is this very feeling of wondering ignorance that impels us to learn more. Hence Socrates’ claim: “the feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy” (Theaetetus, 155d).

Through the dialectic, Socrates has given his interlocutors the courage to abandon some of their familiar, old or habitual views. He then returns to the primary question with the learner now in a more open-minded state, ready to exit the cave and see the world in a new light. In doing so, he has initiated a humble and non-dogmatic curiosity of what lies beyond the familiar. Together they begin to envision new, strange, and unique ways of seeing the world: “that sounds strange, Socrates” (Theaetetus, 198e), “You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners,” says Glaucon responding to the cave allegory (The Republic, Bk.7, 515a) and “I think that there is a stranger consequence still” (Parmenides, 433). They learn the courage needed to greet the “wondrous strange” and “as a stranger give it welcome” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.164).

Socrates continually pushes his interlocutors further beyond the axioms they had previously taken for granted. “Show me the way,” Glaucon asks in The Republic, to which Socrates responds, “Here is no path and the wood is dark and perplexing; still we must push on” (Bk. 4, 432c). In order to forge a new path they needed to lose the old one. They are wandering in thought as they forge their way through wonder. This in turn, fuels greater curiosity about these new, strange ways of knowing.

Allowing the self to enter a state of humility before knowledge is an essential step which opens the heart and mind to new possibilities. In our wondrous state, when paired with courage we have the capacity to see the world in a new way and welcome the “strange” as we abandon some of our old, familiar preconceptions. This is something that our current school system could still learn a great deal from. Presuppositions within students and teachers continue to act as blinders to the world, providing obstacles to further learning. Plato’s conception of wonder is useful in guiding us to reach our blind spots.

Wordsworth: Halted Traveling

For Plato, wonder arises as we begin to dismantle our familiar preconceptions and start exploring strange, new ideas. Wordsworth, however, uncovers wonder as he finds the new in the old, the strange in the familiar, the extraordinary in the ordinary. He wants us to see the world with the fresh eyes of a child. Throughout his work, Wordsworth also promoted and displayed a “sense of awe,” a kind of “exalted joy of being,” again, for him this was akin to the way we approach life as children.

According to the poet, the imaginative reasoning that happens in childhood is the pinnacle of intellectual life as it helps us see into the true vitality of things. The sovereign importance that he gives to childhood and the child’s mind can be seen in the following lines from his autobiographical work The Prelude: “Our simple childhood sits upon a throne/ That hath more power than all the elements” (Bk. 5, v. 508). “The Child is Father of the Man” due to the lessons that man can learn from the child’s unique way of experiencing the world (My Heart Leaps Up, v. 8). The progression into adulthood presents a loss of this “visionary gleam” and the rest of life should be spent trying to rediscover some of the wonder and joy of the child mind (Immortality Ode, v. 56). This is clearly shown in this excerpt from his poem My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!

(v. 1–6)

We can see that this is distinct from Plato’s view that we need to puzzle away the beliefs and illusions and confusions of childhood and progress into the pure intellectual reasoning of adulthood. For Wordsworth, the child is in fact addressed as “thou best Philosopher,” “Mighty Prophet” and “Seer blest” (Immortality Ode, v. 110–114). The poet is responding to the Age of Rationalism that dominated the 18th century and saw society move toward reductive, compartmentalized, mechanical reasoning in pursuit of an objective truth. The drudgery of the time leads him to reflect:

The world is too much with us…
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!…
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It move us not.

(The World is Too Much With Us, v. 1, 4, 7–9)

Whatever is merely formal, dull, and narrows or deadens feelings is not only a loss to humanity but also an injury because according to Wordsworth it was “through the power of joy” that we “see into the life of things” (Tintern Abbey, v. 48–49).

Although superficially this may seem overly sentimental, Wordsworth does not abandon the need for reason; in fact he describes imagination as “reason in her most exalted mood” (The Prelude, Bk. 14, v. 189). This presents a marked move not only away from the prevailing Rationalist doctrine which saw imagination as something to be distrusted but also from the Romantic hostility toward reason. Instead, Wordsworth insists that reason needs to be paired with the heart of a vital appreciation. “We live by admiration,” the poet remarks (The Excursion, Bk. 4, v. 763). This sense of awe is the romantic spirit that underlies most of his poems: the shock of surprise at an owl’s silence, the Leech Gatherer’s wondrous stone-like body, the stunning field of daffodils—to mention just a few. Thus, Wordsworth wants us to uphold, nourish and expand a feeling of awe about the world.

Ashton Nichols relates this Wordsworthian “sense of awe” to Bachelard’s observation that every child is “an astonished being, the being who realizes the astonishment of being” (Nichols, 1987, p. 221). As Seamus Heaney remarks, Wordsworth “had grown up visited by the sensations of immensity, communing with a reality he apprehended beyond the world of the senses” (2005, p. ix). Such a feeling of awe indicates that there is a type of mystery floating behind existence. This fits with Geoffrey Hartman’s insistence that Wordsworth, within his work, had a narrative archetype of “the Halted Traveller:” a figure stopped in his tracks by a sudden perception, and then compelled to linger in a state of awe (1964, pp. 7, 12). This is shown in The Solitary Reaper:

I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending; –
I listen’d, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

(v. 27–32)

Similarly in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Wordsworth mentions that upon seeing the field of daffodils, he “gazed – and gazed” (v. 17). These moments of prolonged awe are distinct from a type of curiosity that leaps from no...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part I: The Nature of Wonder and its Educational Uses
• Part II: Engaging Wonder in Everyday Classrooms
• Part III: Dimensions of Educational Wonder
• About the Contributors
• Index