Whatever Happened to Idle Curosity?

I’m not going to challenge anyone on the question of whether or not kids today are as bright as or brighter than previous generations. They can make computers, IPods, and online game platforms stand on their heads; they can go on and on about the latest rapper; and, boy, can they tell you who’s on which drugs or where to get them.
This is suburbia I’m talking about. Middle class, some with six figure household incomes. A goodly number college bound. Some diversity—but mostly middle class diversity. As I subbed for high school English today, I sat and watched. Five groups, two tenth grade, three eleventh grade.
As I watched, I wondered, “What happened to curiosity?” Their teachers sometimes wonder the same thing in my hearing. Want to bore these kids fast—to the point of disorderly conduct? Try telling them something about the subject that isn’t cemented into the text as a requirement.
Five years ago, I could get a class to listen. There were attentive looks, sounds of interested surprise, a few questions. Today, if it isn’t absolutely required by the text book, they really, really don’t want to know. I’ve stopped all attempts at adding anything to their handout sheets.
I just sit and watch them after giving the assignment. I try to keep most of them working instead of chatting about the only things that seem to interest them: sex, getting stoned, and their own music. The conversations that break out are both enlightening and appalling.
Present one of these kids with a word he’s never heard before—or an author or a line of a poem—and he will react with disdain. YOU are the “stupid” one for knowing something he doesn’t and sees no value in. How dumb of you to bring up something outside of my (very limited) experience or interest.
When I was a junior high or high school student and we had a short assignment, I recall an entire room full of us getting volumes of an encyclopedia and reading it. We were curious. Many of my classmates (from about the same economic strata as the kids I watched today) actually paid attention to the news and knew what was going on.
I still remember how furious my six grade class was when Truman fired MacArthur in 1951. We were interested and we were curious. Often it was an idle curiosity—and that’s not bad. More than one scientific breakthrough has come when a scientist at home or on coffee break had an idle thought—and then followed it out the window.
Can it be that with band practice, sports practice, work to support an automobile, kids are too busy to allow for curiosity? Anything that makes the lesson a line longer is extremely unwelcome. “I’ve got a life, dude, and I’ve no time to learn anything I don’t have to.” Pretty accurate summation.
Now, if as part of a class project for a grade, a DVD of someone like Al Gore says, “About face and say, `Green’”, they will wheel about. They won’t think much about it—after all thought cuts into work time, too. But they’ll march in a kind of lock step. After all, he’s a celebrity now. This generation seems willing to follow any celebrity anywhere, anytime, anyhow.
Many of them supported Obama. Okay, why?
“Because Bush is stupid.”
A righteous case can be made for that. “How was he stupid? What did he do?”
An annoyed look, “Because he’ stupid.” (How could I be so dumb?)
Some thought Obama would bring “change”. What kind of change? After all, tripping on a crack in the sidewalk brings change. One minute you’re up and walking, next you’re flat on your face. That assuredly is change. But specifically what sort of change will Obama bring? Once again, the questioner is the stupid one.
It takes curiosity to find answers to questions like that. Even idle curiosity can begin the job. But that requires time. It requires an interest in something outside of your own blinkered little world. That’s a trip few of these kids are willing to take. Neither on nor off narcotics.
Possibly if the national economic disaster we seem poised to experience comes upon us, it will force kids who no longer have jobs, no longer can afford to drive cars anywhere and anytime to slow down. Forget smelling the roses, just encourage that unfamiliar sensation called curiosity.