This is a wandering and wondering post.
I often wondered through my career in education, whether it is possible to teach ‘wonder’ in schools. I always thought not.
In his book, The Master and His Emissary (p. 178), Iain McGilchrist quotes Arne Naess as saying, ‘Philosophy begins and ends with wondering – profound wondering.’ And Aristotle wrote ‘For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin, and at first began, to philosophize.’ Also, in ‘The Master and His Emissary’ McGilchrist quotes other philosophers as making similar statements, e.g. Descartes, Wittgenstein, Goethe, Plato, Heidegger.
This suggests that it must be important that children have some experience of a sense of wonder, as it would seem linked to curiosity, a questioning approach to life, and a search for meaning. In other words, children need to be taught to philosophise. But philosophy, if taught at all in our UK schools, seems to be a very low priority subject.
I have a friend who has told me that she has never felt a sense of wonder or awe and that she doesn’t know what it is. From this, can we assume that there are children in our schools who never have an experience of wonder? Can this be true or is it that the language we use is confusing? Is wondering (profound or not) the same as a sense or experience of wonder, and is wonder the same experience as awe? Can children/adults experience awe, wonder and enchantment without knowing it, or is it more that we don’t have the language to express this?
Patrick Curry uses the word enchantment to encompass the experience of awe and wonder, saying that there are degrees of intensity of enchantment from charm to delight to deep enchantment (which we sometimes refer to as joy, or awe). Enchantment is not the same as happiness or pleasure.
In a recent conversation with Iain McGilchrist on YouTube, Patrick Curry draws on his recently published book, Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works, to explain what he means by this.
I haven’t read his book, but there are points in this video which I think could usefully be noted by teachers when thinking about ensuring that children have experiences of enchantment in their classrooms.
One of the key points that came out of this video for me, is that enchantment (wonder) cannot be willed. A teacher cannot write a lesson plan to teach wonder! Enchantment is not biddable. It cannot be managed or organised or put to work. Nobody is in charge, but it does require a participatory relationship, in the sense that we have to be open to it. It is personal and relational and takes the form of a meeting or encounter across a gap of differences.
Enchantment is a way of being in the world, of presencing. It is not about knowing but is ontological. As Wittgenstein thought, we’re better to wonder at things than believe that we know them. You can’t possess enchantment or be possessed by it. If you try and put it to work, it cannot bring its gift.
So, what attitude should we (teachers) adopt?
We must create the conditions which favour enchantment – fearless receptivity. We must help/encourage children (and adults) to stay open to it and pay attention to it if it does happen. We know that young children have it but then tend to lose it. Enchantment cannot be micromanaged or controlled. This is to lose it. You can’t make it happen, but you can stop it happening. It requires humility and wildness (which I equate to uncertainty). Ultimately enchantment is love, a non-possessive love, as necessary for the health of humans as sunlight is for life.
My interpretation of the discussion between Patrick Curry and Iain McGilchrist, when related to education and teaching, is that wonder cannot be taught, but the conditions for experiencing it can be created. These conditions will require the teacher to forego micromanagement and control, to realise that it will not be possible to have planned a learning objective for the lesson, or to assess the outcome of the lesson, to allow for a degree of ‘wildness’ and openness that might be unfamiliar to the teacher and children alike, and to ‘go with the flow’.
I’m not sure whether this is possible in today’s education system where everything is measured, and humanities subjects (philosophy in particular), seem to be awarded so little time in schools where the emphasis is on the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Whilst the STEM subjects can also offer experiences of wonder and enchantment, perhaps we should reflect on Wittgenstein’s comment that ‘Man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.’ (quoted by McGilchrist on p.157, The Master and His Emissary).
‘Remember that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but the moments that take our breath away’. (anonymous)
In this post I have not attempted to cover the conversation between Patrick Curry and Iain McGilchrist in any depth. For that please view the video and read their books:
References
Curry, P. (2023). Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works (Contemporary Liminality). Routledge.
McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.
Jenny Connected 
What a good topic. My take is that wonder is natural, and then the unasked for drilling of facts destroys it. I wholly disagree about science, perhaps because I’ve been reading H.G. Wells on pedagogy: wonder about nature is natural in children, who ask questions that if left open can lead to more wonder. Without wonder and awe at nature there is no science. Rousseau’s Emile learned navigation to get him out of the forest. The problem is determining what ought to be learned too early, before the child has developed the habit of wonder, the questioning without adult “answers”. Whether it can be reclaimed is another issue. “Unlearning” might be necessary, and the development of new habits of mind that can play with the answers one is given, reinvigorating a source of discovery.
Thank you, Jenny, for yet another wise and important discussion.
I haven’t (yet) watched the linked conversation, but your reference to McGilchrist quoting and Wittgenstein’s comment that
‘Man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.’
has led me to find Raymond Tallis’ ‘Newton’s Sleep’ in my bookshelves. Writing in 1995, Tallis, a geriatrician and deeply thoughtful author with a background in philosophy, was arguing for a mutually-respectful balance between the ‘two cultures’ of art and science. He took his title from the famous lines of William Blake ‘May God us keep from Single vision & Newton’s sleep’.
Blake, of course, saw Newton and his propensity to measure everything (as in his image of a naked Newton crouching over the world and measuring it with a pair of viciously-pointed dividers) as something close to the Devil himself. This is no doubt going too far, but in spite of so many powerful arguments for freedom and balance down the years, the curriculum that our young people are taught from and teachers have to teach becomes ever-more proscribed, supervised, systematised, micro-managed (as you say) and uniform.
I spent the latter part of my career trying to mitigate this trend in general medical practice, and I saw it affecting my biology-teacher wife and our many teacher friends.
What you say is so very, very important. Perhaps one day we will see the tide begin to turn.
Best wishes, and thanks, James
I put up on a white board in our student center something everyday that will hopefully, cause students to stop and ponder. Sometimes I use quotes from philosophers, sometimes pieces of verse, and sometimes song lyrics, and sometimes my own thoughts. One of the favorites was borrowed from the Led Zepplin song, “Stairway to Heaven.” The piece of lyric, of course, “…Makes me wonder…” I am always looking for whatever I can find to prompt discussion, questions that generate more questions, and whatever “…makes me wonder…” I may be an old teacher, I am 72, but I hope to kindle the fires of wonder and cause students to look up and just wonder and go to seek.
Thank you for a nice piece and a chance to “wonder”
Ed Pirie
West Topsham, Vermont
Thank you Lisa and James. It’s interesting that you have both commented on the Wittgenstein quote. I agree Lisa, that there is plenty of wonder to be found in science, but I can also relate your comment James, that our science curriculum can fail to provide an experience of wonder. Thanks for the reference to Newton’s Sleep, which I haven’t come across before.
Hello Ed. What a lovely example of how to create the conditions to encourage an experience of wonder. Thank you for sharing that. I would be interested to know what sort of response you get from your students. It must be fascinating to observe.
Hi Jenny, I have noticed students are coming into the learning center and immediately looking to see what thoughts I have put up on the board for the day. I got thank you notes during teacher appreciation week thanking me for the “wisdom” I share. I am seeing a very positive reaction to my daily posts. I hear the students talking among each other and discussing the posts. I often use song lyrics from the 60s and 70s as prompts. There were a lot of thoughtful song writers during this period with lyrics packed with meaning. The students often go to YouTube to listen to the songs and then this brings up more discussion. They often ask me to join in the discussions and I love these “thinking outloud” talks that develop.
Hi Jenny (again), I have come out of retirement to work in the high school I graduated from in 1969. It was a brand-new high school (built in 1965) and my class was the first class to complete 4 years there and graduate. Of course, every day is a flood of memories for me. I retired as an educator in an alternative ed program I started in 1997 to serve at-risk and out-of-school youth. In the first few years, the only credential I could offer was the GED. My program was very successful and was replicated around the state of Vermont. Soon the State of Vermont provided in law an alternative path to a high school diploma. This really boosted the work of my programs and the others like it around the state. The “flexible pathway” diplomas were anchored in the standards, but not tied down to seat time programs with tightly prescribed curricula. This allowed people like me to be creative and co-author personal learning plans (plps) with our students that were driven by the student’s goals and interests. The key to the plps was what a student wanted to do after graduating from high school (student goals). Giving the student co-authorship and a great deal of control over their educations was a very key factor in the success of flexible pathways. This alternative educational model started to lose a place at the table with the ascendency of the data folks taking control of education in Vermont about 2015. Standardized test scores and the collection of measurable data became the gods that were worshipped. My kind of educating was looked down on as not good enough, especially as it was not data driven. End results were not enough data to convince the numbers people.
Anyway, I retired in 2021 and have since returned to work in the public high school I graduated from a long time ago. On the last day of school I left this quote on the white board for the students to contemplate:
“No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” (Heraclitus, about 500 BCE).
This quote caused lots of discussion. At first, the students thought it must have something to do with my love for fly fishing. And then, they started to go deeper into the the words, and finally, they asked me, “Ed, is this about you and coming back here?” I said, “Yes, so what do you think Heraclitus was talking about? Was he anticipating Ed about 2500 years into the future or is there more here? We had lots of good discussion around this. What I love is everyone has ideas and thoughts and gets engaged. There is the “wonder” and “enchantment.” I reminded the students to go back to “Stairway to Heaven (Led Zepplin) and look for a lyric, “…sometimes words have two meanings…” Talk about an “ahha” moment, this was one.
I probably have more fun than a “…body is entitled to…,” and I hope my students do too along with some “wonder” and “enchantment.” If I have helped make this happen, then I have done some good work.
Take care,
Ed Pirie
West Topsham, Vermont
Hello Ed. Thank you so much for sharing your fascinating story . What a crying shame that your alternative ed program in Vermont, like so much else in education, has been destroyed by excessive measurement. But good that you have been able to return to your public high school and continue to stimulate your students’ thinking.
Have you followed the work of Iain McGilchrist? He often quotes Heraclitus, particularly when discussing how everything flows. He also often discusses paradoxes which your students might like. For example – We are used to the idea that the cells in our bodies are constantly dying and being replaced. So the question is, is it still your body after a number of years?
Hope you continue to have fun with your students for a long time to come.
Jenny