Get Curious

My friend and first executive director of Triangle Leadership Academy, Joe Peel, often speaks of the important role of curiosity. Besides leading to lots of learning, Joe explains, getting curious keeps the mind too busy to let unhealthy emotions, like anger or fear, incite behavior one may later regret. 

Joe's beliefs about curiosity are supported by the teaching in a TLA training program produced by VitalSmarts and vended in North Carolina by The Learning Consortium, co-founded by Howard and Lynda Schultz of Chapel Hill about whom I have written earlier. Here's the idea:

When faced with what seems rude, selfish, or just plain asinine behavior, students of Crucial Conversation are taught to stop and ask themselves a question: Why would a reasonable, rationale, decent person do what they did? In other words, don't get mad--get curious. It's a learner's stance. 

Beyond adopting a cooler mode of processing others' momentary behavior, I have found merit in using the "get curious" attitude in appreciating entire worldviews that differ from my own. For example, my brother John and I could not be more politically opposite. Assuming the best of my brother and taking a learner's stance, however, has made me understand how he has arrived at the conclusions he has. It's been a very long time since we've argued. But let's turn to something a little closer to this audience.

I look around at the state of public education, and perhaps like some of you, I worry a little bit. Judging from our diminished international ranking, some people have concluded that "the system" has failed our children. Some people say that what we have is no longer acceptable. Why do reasonable, rationale, decent people say such things? I cite two illustrations from my own experience this week and offer them as a way for me to model what I teach.

Illustration One. Thursday morning, Wake County principals and central service administrators hosted international education speaker, William Daggett, at the Webster Center in Cary. With every listener in the room, my Durham Public School guest, Tonya Williams, Eno River School principal, and I asked ourselves: Is it true what Dr. Daggett said, that in three years, without swift and dramatic change, the public school system as we know it will no longer exist? Get curious.

Illustration Two. Wednesday night, I accepted Howard and Lynda Schultz's invitation to attend a Heritage Foundation Education Panel Discussion at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. There I heard Heritage policy analyst, Lindsey Burke, characterize President Obama's embrace of public charter schools, viewed by many progressives as advancing a right-wing agenda, as itself left of center.  Say what!? Is a voucher system that potentially uses public dollars to support private schools the only acceptable option? Get real curious.

So by now, you see how you too may apply Joe's principle. In my opinion, the learner's stance is always appropriate, whatever the issue, whoever the actor. Here's what I know: We are all Americans and we all want our children to have a bright future in a thriving society where no one suffers discrimination because of the color of her skin or the language of her parents. If we can begin with that as our common educational purpose, I think we have a fighting chance at E Pluribus Unum and smarter kids.