Curiosity

The last wash before we go is done. It’s hanging out on the line even though it is a rather overcast day. Tomorrow I’m going to do the ironing. Thursday will be impossible with Angie, our home help, coming.

As I was making my chicken pies ready for dinner today, I had the radio on, “The Life Scientific” on Radio 4. This series gives you an idea about the career of various important living British scientists, their life & work. Today it was about Professor Jim Al-Khalili, a man who failed his ‘A’ levels & yet now runs the largest medical imaging facility in Europe.

What was being said vaguely mixed in my head with yesterday’s announcement that children who fail to get Grade 3 Maths & English at GCSE will in future have to stay at school until they do achieve that standard. I thought at the time what a waste of time. Some pupils are just not academically inclined. They are probably great at some subjects but not English and/or Maths. Staying longer at school just gets them more in a spiral of failure & resentment. What is more they may never be able to achieve it. I have visions of 90 year olds still at school because they can’t, or won’t, pass the exam at the required level.

As I listened to today’s programme the thought that crystallised in my mind is that curiosity is the basis of all learning. If you are full of wonder, you learn. If not, you don’t.

I was always a sponge keen to mop up new information, to see how things work, to experience new things. My range of interests is broad. My problem deciding on a degree course was that there were so many that appealed. In fact there is very little I can’t raise an interest in if it is presented to me in the right way. Every day I try to learn a little more, to expand my horizons. But maybe it’s that very interest & curiosity which makes me the intellectual that I am, that enabled me to be a graduate. People I know, who are not particularly intelligent, whether well educated or not, do seem to lack that overwhelming curiosity about the world & what makes things tick, that urge to explore & find out new things. It’s as though they have blinkers on so they cannot see.