This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on July 11 - 17, 2016. 

My first few years of teaching were enormously challenging. Each day, the dreaded moment arrived. My lecture was over. I would wearily ask, “Any questions?” and nine times out of ten, be met with absolute silence. I puzzled over this lack of curiosity — I knew that the subject matter, A-level economics, was important, interesting and challenging for my students. They were generally highly motivated, ambitious individuals who came from supportive, stable families. So, where were the questions?

This problem bothered me increasingly as time passed. The more students I pushed through the examinations and into reputable universities, the more I was left with a nagging feeling that I had failed to ignite their most powerful engine for learning,  namely curiosity — the ability to wonder and ask good questions.

It has almost become a cliché to say that the only constant in today’s world is change. Ultimately, this means that to succeed, tomorrow’s citizens will rely overwhelmingly on lifelong learning. This places a premium on curiosity; people who are curious tend to be much more powerfully motivated to discover.

Across diverse industries, leaders point to curiosity as a vital element for success. Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, a leading global design firm, cites questioning as the starting point of most creative work. Peter Drucker, a pioneering thinker in the management consulting sphere, was an insatiably curious person who famously quipped that the most serious mistakes arise not from wrong answers, but rather, asking the wrong questions. And Egon Zehnder, a top-tier human resources firm, has named curiosity as one of the most important factors when identifying potential in senior executives.

As a society, why aren’t we more curious? It can be all too easy to throw up our hands and blame the usual suspects — fear and a lack of confidence, for instance, or the Asian overemphasis on respecting authority. To be fair, these are valid concerns.

The culture of fear begins in school, where we often ask students to speak when they have answers, not questions. As Nabokov said, “Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form”, and to be sure, there are far too many classrooms, meeting rooms and boardrooms in the country that practise a low-tolerance policy towards pesky, disruptive questioners.

But this type of conformity comes at a price. Again and again, in schools and at the workplace, I have observed curiosity being substituted by a darker form of questioning, rooted in fear or compliance rather than passion: Will this be on the test? Have you checked with so and so? How will we manage stakeholder X, Y or Z? The list goes on. While rules and compliance matter, confining ourselves to a risk management style of questioning places serious constraints on creative and original thought.

Is the solution then to simply allow for freer questioning and wait for sparks to fly? I doubt it. For all the smiling and encouraging nodding in my classroom, I couldn’t turn my students into better questioners. And if I were perfectly honest, I wasn’t terribly curious myself.

In my two (albeit, richly rewarding) university experiences abroad, I was in a liberal environment, surrounded by excellent role models. Yet, my learning was decidedly passive; I sat on the sidelines during most of my classes, as my peers asked questions at a dizzying rate. I knew how to doggedly pursue the answers that I needed to perform academically, but was stumped when required to find meaningful research questions.

How was I supposed to know what I wanted to know? I knew my experience was not unique — I have heard versions of this story from many talented, high-achieving Malaysians, and I noticed many fellow students experiencing the same difficulty.

Clearly, the mere permission to be curious is insufficient to create questioning minds. So what does it take? Is it even possible? I had always perceived curiosity as something innate, a personality characteristic rather than something one could actively cultivate. But in fact, there is significant evidence indicating that the opposite is true — curiosity is like a muscle that becomes stronger with use and conversely, atrophies when neglected.

In his book, Curious, Ian Leslie draws from a selection of highly successful individuals across various fields to offer different methods to become more inquisitive, including Steve Job’s famous exhortation to “stay foolish”. It seems as though some of the best minds intentionally nurture their own curiosity.

Tim Brown calls this “the discipline of curiosity” and designers at IDEO spend time relearning childish ways of working they have forgotten — including the state of being constantly curious. And Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, founders of The Right Question Institute, believe firmly that questioning is a skill that needs to be deliberately honed. Their Question Formulation Technique develops the skill of questioning in a systematic way; a simple procedure helps users to generate, improve and prioritise their own questions. Far from being a gift for the chosen few, a curious disposition seems to be an attainable skill.

While I lamented the lack of curious students, the rare ones that emerged drove me up the wall. They challenged everything, from the economic theories I introduced, to the flawed design of the examinations, to my decision to become “just a teacher”. Their curiosity tremendously enriched my thinking, and is probably serving them well now in their respective careers.

But beyond this, I had the sense that these students were very much in the driver’s seat — in control of their own development, rather than dependent on me to tell them which questions mattered. And most importantly, they were thoroughly enjoying the ride. The impact of curiosity on their lives reached far beyond mere productivity.

From a pure labour market perspective, curiosity is worth cultivating and is essential for our long-term survival. But instead of seeing it as just another skill or competency that we should now begin to assess at interviews or performance reviews, it is worth remembering that it is also intrinsically valuable — after all, it adds colour and spice to life, and is ultimately what makes us uniquely human.

Joanna Lim is principal and co-founder of Anyaman Preschool, an early childhood centre inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy

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