God Made Us Curious

I can still feel the excitement that bubbled up inside me as I took my assigned chair in the colorfully decorated classroom. I was seven years old and had recently entered the second-grade advanced readers class.

As I sat down, I glanced around the room. Photographs of farm animals covered one wall, as we would be learning about the farms that produced the food we ate. Large formal letters covered another wall, an exciting new way of writing with lovely curls of cursive. And on the chalkboard, simple math problems had been carefully copied for us to solve that day.

Beyond the regular thrills at school of friendships, playtime at recess, and trading items from our packed lunches, I loved the learning and thinking that went on in classrooms like this. Getting the right answer had become a sort of game to me. My mind never seemed to stop! And, I would later be told, I had a gift for verbal processing. In other words, I loved to talk about everything I was thinking.

Generally, before this particular day, I had considered school and learning a delight. But this day changed everything. My teacher had read a fairy tale that captured my imagination. At the end of the story, she put her book down and began to ask us questions. I eagerly threw my hand into the air and began to wave furiously at her, hoping she would pick me to answer. I was sure I had the perfect response.

She called on two other students. I waved even harder, hoping she would call on me. As I practically crawled out of my seat to give one more flurry of waves, she looked at me sternly and said, “Put your hand down now. You talk too much and you ask too many questions. Your ideas are disruptive to the class. Sit still and don’t utter another word.”

Laughter filled the room. I felt deep shame and her admonition cut like a knife to my enthusiastic little-girl heart. Tears filled my eyes. The boy sitting next to me began taunting, “Cry baby! Cry baby!”

I was surprised, hurt, and offended at being criticized in front of all of my friends; I had felt such enthusiasm to answer her questions. Jerking my head downward, I stared at my toes, terrified of my friends’ smirking glances.

Somewhere deep in my heart came a resolve: I would never again risk the chance of shaming myself in the classroom by showing such enthusiasm. Seared into my memory, this incident would go on to define much of how I felt through the following years, well into adulthood, with always the thought, “Why must you keep thinking and talking all the time?”

But I also told myself, “If I am ever a teacher, I will let my students speak freely. I will let them talk about what they know and encourage them to ask questions and be curious. Most importantly, I will be nice to them.”

Over the years, I figured out how to take tests, write papers, and get by with a minimal amount of effort. Still reluctant to engage with teachers and risk their scorn, I would tap my toes in boredom just waiting for class to end. Perhaps I had attention deficit disorder before anyone knew what that was. But oddly, in spite of – or perhaps because of – this increasing disillusionment, my experiences began to stir in me a deeper interest in education. There had to be a better way.

In college I majored in education, but found that many of the philosophies of education were about controlling students in the classroom or performance-based teaching criteria with the objective of securing better test scores for college, with little reference to how to enliven classical literature, science, or history. I was an avid reader and interested in precisely such topics.

During this time, I also began asking questions about faith and God. I started to pray every day, asking God, if he really was there, for an answer, any answer, to my increasing uncertainty. One lazy afternoon I was reading in my tenth-floor dorm room when there was a light knock at my door. A kind, soft-spoken woman asked me if I wanted to take a survey about faith in God. I thought she must be an angel sent from God as an answer to my prayers, and invited her in. Conversing with me for over two hours, she did not tire of my questions. Once again, I found myself that child full of wonder, waving frantically.

Children allowed a wonder-filled life will cultivate inner strength, a confidence in their own ability to think, evaluate, and know.

As my new friend patiently continued to take time to engage with me, it began to dawn on me that true education is more than acquiring data, facts, or fill-in-the-the-blank answers. Here was a teacher who taught with love and patience, one who embraced my questions and uncertainty as vital to my intellectual and spiritual progress. I realized that questions are an essential part of our developmental design. The desire to know, explore, create, and understand is intrinsic to the brain. Wonder and curiosity are what drive the development of the mind, strengthening mental muscles and opening pathways to knowledge. Wonder is the beginning of gathering knowledge that beckons us to further pursue the mysteries of life. It leads us on a continual journey of discovery. All those driving questions that filled my mind throughout my education were the Holy Spirit’s way to drive me to want to know and understand this amazing world that God had designed for our knowledge and pleasure.

At nearly thirty years old, I married and had my first child. As I held this little girl in my arms, it was as though God whispered to me, “This tiny baby is a gift from me to you. I give her to you and want you to be a steward over this precious human life that will have eternal implications. Will you so love and serve her that she will believe in my love? Will you offer her the most excellent education, that she might live to her intellectual potential? Will you train her spiritually to embrace a virtuous life?”

Three more children entered our family. I understood intuitively and grew in the conviction that these four children would become the most important students in my life. Slowly, an educational philosophy began to take shape that grew out of all of my years of questions and endless thoughts.

Hailing back to the day when I was told to be quiet and not ask questions, I realized that I had developed values for an education that allowed for questions, personality, and personal interest, without comparison or competition with others. Surely if God had given each of my children unique DNA and diverse physical attributes, I needed to honor those differences. I sought to release their innate wonder, which would lead them each to their own work and their own story.

Nurturing them to grow strong in their own intellectual formation and opening a world in which they could wonder at God’s handiwork became my primary goal. Children allowed a wonder-filled life will cultivate inner strength, a confidence in their own ability to think, evaluate, and know. So those who influence children must fight to protect time for the imagination to have space to work. It became a focus in our home to create a learning environment in which there would be freedom to explore many subjects, where our children could engage in different interests and grow at their own pace. Providing sources of intellectual stimulation gave them brain food: puzzles, hundreds of books at their fingertips, magazine subscriptions, creative toys, dress-ups, paper and pens for writing their own books, musical instruments, and more gave them opportunities for self-learning every day. I could see that my children were naturally interested in learning, exploring, understanding; my goal was to nurture that love for learning, that innate desire to grow stronger in their own capacity to think, create, read, and synthesize their thoughts.

Colin Page, Treasure Hunter, 2014, oil on canvas. Used by permission of The Page Gallery.

Spending our days exploring provided endless delight and an appreciation for God’s amazing creation. The outdoors became our natural playground. While eating on our mountainside balcony in Colorado, I would comment, “What a gorgeous sunset. I wonder what mood God was in when he chose the colors of orange, yellow, and gold to define sunsets.” Or, “What made him decide to throw lightning bolts across dark blue cloudy skies and then follow up with a boom?” We would sometimes listen to the sounds of birds in the forest nearby. “Just think of the symphony of sounds God created, and the amazing ways he clothed animals differently. Woodpeckers drumming, roosters crowing, mocking birds chirping, blue jays squawking. What a museum of nature he created for our pleasure and study!” “And what,” I would ask my children, “does that teach you about his personality?”

“That he has a sense of humor. He has to have one because he designed giraffes with long necks, monkeys with a giggle, parrots with a mimicking squawk,” one child suggested.

“That he cares about diversity – different sounds, different colors of feathers, size of feet, shape of bodies. I guess God chose very different kinds of creatures to show his ability and purposes in creation. Maybe that means he also created all of us uniquely on purpose, not to be cookie cutters of one another. He must love us for our different designs – that there are so many kinds of beautiful.”

Wonder was the engine that drove them to discover, to be creative in their play and work. And God had created that wonder, and all those questions, to be an instrument of discovery in their education. As I look back over the decades of my life, I understand that I was born to learn and to find fulfillment in becoming a teacher, especially of my own children. God entrusts our children and students into our hands to complete this best of works, for which we answer to him. He gives us the stewardship of nurturing, investing in, and teaching these little human beings created by his love and design.