Meanwhile, here’s another episode of Eavesdropping On Bluesky.*
@sketchesbyboze: Learning in school is not enough. You must continue to teach yourself throughout your life. Study history, read myths, memorize poems, get acquainted with the greatest philosophers & writers. In an age when tech is cooking many brains, we need an army of autodidacts.
@shvetathakrar: I would add, make sure you draw on a global set of all these things, to help break you out of a limited worldview.
@sketchesbyboze: This is so important.
Remember that Baltimore Beat piece on urban beekeeping I recommended yesterday? Nikkia Rowe, founding CEO of the John Newman Honeybee Company, reveals a similar mindset in describing what motivates her.
“I feel like with bees, I can spend the entirety of the rest of my life with them and still not know everything about them. Every day I learn something new,” she says.
Rowe founded the South Baltimore venture after an almost thirty year career in education. She is still learning. She wants to learn.
Her words and her work speak eloquently to what it means to recognize interest and curiosity within oneself and to pursue them. I admit I am less moved by the words below even though I largely agree with them.
In an age when tech is cooking many brains, we need an army of autodidacts.
Must it be an “army of autodidacts”? Yes, we need many, many people who want to keep learning and really follow it up by continuing to learn. We need to encourage curiosity and make it possible for people to recognize their own natural abilities to learn something new.
A cadre of curiousity? A network of inquiry? A legion of learners?
It’s all in the word choice, I suppose. All I know is that if someone suggested I join an army of autodidacts I would probably back away slowly.
Several weeks ago I heard television host, writer, and activist Sandi Toksvig describe a dinner table game she used to play when her children were growing up. She now plays it with her grandchildren.
Tell me something I didn’t know.**
So my grandchildren are seven, four, 15 months and 10 days, right?
And we play a thing at the table called Tell Me Something I Didn't Know. Now it can be anything. I don't mind if you tell me that Rosalind's got chicken pox and I don't even know who Rosalind is.
I don't really mind what the thing is. It's sort of of interest to me. And then we'll talk about what do you know about chicken pox and what do you think about this and that thing.
But start it with the kids now because they will come up with things that you just hadn't thought about. So my seven-year-old grandson, he's very interested in the world and his auntie, so my other daughter has just had this baby. And he said, you need a good role model.
You could use my mother. And it was so sweet that he had thought about it. He thought about good role models for babies.
And so listen to them. And even now, start it now. Tell me something I didn't already know.
It's a great question.
It is a great way to foster conversation and interaction. It also shows a great way to model curiosity. Toksvig is comfortablly acknowledging that there are plenty of things she doesn’t know.
Nothing is scarier these days than people who don’t know and don’t care.
One last thing. Gavin Andrews tells a story in the introduction to 500 Kids Art Ideas: Inspiring Projects for Fostering Creativity and Self-Expression
About a year ago my oldest child was at home drawing and I asked him what he was making. He replied, “Something I have never seen before.” I was blown away by this statement and and not just because he's my son! Did my three-year old really just say that? His reply illustrates how open and fearless young children are to creative experiences and new ideas. Anyone so willing to explore their creativity and imagination is truly an artist. The wonderful thing is, most kids are artists at heart!
- Making something I have never seen before.
- Learning something I have never known before.
- Doing something I have never done before.
*The popular spinoff of Other People’s Tweets.
**From We Can Be Weirdos: #70 Quite Inexplicable: Sandi Toksvig and the Durham Apparition, Oct 31, 2024
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