For the most part of my life, I have been a rather incurious individual. I do not know if I was born incurious. I do not recall exactly what killed my curiosity or when my curiosity was killed. In the first chapter of her book The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire, Cynthia Enloe inquired feminist curiosity and incuriosity and applied her curiosity to international politics. This chapter of her book compelled me to reconsider my incurious past and curiouser present. I came to the conclusion that the traditional education system discourages curiosity.
Curiosity, according to Enloe, is an act of exploring and challenging existing “facts”, customs, traditions and cultures, which consumes energy (3). Incuriosity is therefore …show more content…
NATHA provides education and opportunities to primarily underprivileged kids and teens living in the Pasadena area in California. For a little more background, Pasadena is divided by an imaginary race line; the southern area is populated with mostly middle class Asians, Whites, and Latinos, people living in the northern area are often poor Blacks and Latinos. I was assigned to prepare the science and arts programs. For the first week, I hated the students because most of them kept on talking and interpreted my lecture. This bugged me a lot since I spent a great amount of effort into preparing the program. I was curious of why the students were behaving that way and I came to the conclusion which perpetuates the stereotype that poor people don’t value education. On the second week, as part of the program, I took the students to a trip to the Norton Simon Museum. On our way there, I asked one of the student in the bus whether she liked my lessons. She said yes, and because of my curiosity I replied to her, “then why do you guys talk so much.” She then shared with me her experience at school and home where her voice was often ignored. She was more actively talking partly because her peers valued her voice but also because she saw me less of an authority figure but more as their peer who would understand her struggle in school. Her response surprised me, reminded me of the position I was in, and forced me to reposition myself. NATHA hired because they did not want an adult teacher, they wanted the kind-of-adult 18 years old who during his interview described the love of his untraditional college education. However, during the first week, I turned to the traditional education framework of authority-lecturing-and-others-accepting method because that was how I was taught for the most of my life. It was easy way out and I revised my education approach immediately after
Curiosity, according to Enloe, is an act of exploring and challenging existing “facts”, customs, traditions and cultures, which consumes energy (3). Incuriosity is therefore …show more content…
NATHA provides education and opportunities to primarily underprivileged kids and teens living in the Pasadena area in California. For a little more background, Pasadena is divided by an imaginary race line; the southern area is populated with mostly middle class Asians, Whites, and Latinos, people living in the northern area are often poor Blacks and Latinos. I was assigned to prepare the science and arts programs. For the first week, I hated the students because most of them kept on talking and interpreted my lecture. This bugged me a lot since I spent a great amount of effort into preparing the program. I was curious of why the students were behaving that way and I came to the conclusion which perpetuates the stereotype that poor people don’t value education. On the second week, as part of the program, I took the students to a trip to the Norton Simon Museum. On our way there, I asked one of the student in the bus whether she liked my lessons. She said yes, and because of my curiosity I replied to her, “then why do you guys talk so much.” She then shared with me her experience at school and home where her voice was often ignored. She was more actively talking partly because her peers valued her voice but also because she saw me less of an authority figure but more as their peer who would understand her struggle in school. Her response surprised me, reminded me of the position I was in, and forced me to reposition myself. NATHA hired because they did not want an adult teacher, they wanted the kind-of-adult 18 years old who during his interview described the love of his untraditional college education. However, during the first week, I turned to the traditional education framework of authority-lecturing-and-others-accepting method because that was how I was taught for the most of my life. It was easy way out and I revised my education approach immediately after