Wisdom for Kids?

The connection between education and wisdom is not always easy to understand. Do students really want to become wise? Conversely, will students be willing to listen to the “wisdom” of teachers when they encounter such teachers?

     I remember when I was in fifth grade how I went through a period when I became fascinated with the wise old philosopher—even though I hardly even knew where I had picked up my representation of such a person. There was a time when I was visiting my dad in the hospital and discovered a mysterious note on the ground which had contained cryptic Latin words. I imagined that somehow these words belonged to one of the faculties where people were doing their research. I was mystified not only by the strangeness of the words themselves (which literally seemed to have come from another planet), but also the kinds of disciplines I was learning about through encyclopedias and personal explorations in science and nature literature: cytology, embryology, anatomy, therapy, physiology. All of these words were opening up mysterious worlds to me.

    Did “wisdom” matter to me when I was ten years old? Perhaps not. Looking back in retrospect, I suppose that teachers need wisdom to manage themselves, impart important and valuable information in the classroom, and they also know much more about the emotional dynamics of their students: how to motivate them when they are feeling low, how to inspire their curiosity, and so on. But for children like myself, I don’t think it’s the “wisdom” of elders that impressed me so much as the awe and mystery of the adult world.

    It is sad to me now that when I hear the words “cytology” or even “molecular biology”, I simply don’t have the same awe or wonder I had as a young child reading those school books. What happened to those feelings, I wonder? Were they simply stages of development that I went through to pick up the kinds of knowledge that were needed for me at the time? Or was it all just dreaming and imagining what isn’t there to begin with?

   I think that even when teachers are not able to inspire students with practical examples of wisdom or morality, it’s worthwhile that students can at least spend time getting fascinated by the world beyond the school. When I am teaching Gulliver’s Travels to the Grade 4 students, I am always trying to incorporate some element of mystery or fascination about the political, social and scientific worlds that Swift inhabited at the time when he was writing this book. I am not so sure---I do have doubts and hesitations around whether the students are learning anything useful to themselves. However, what I do try to instill within them is the sense that there is always something new and mysterious that hasn’t yet been explored. This sense of wonder is what drives the search for wisdom, in some ways, because it forces the students out of the world of comfort and familiarity.