Tag Archives: curiosity

Be curious. And please argue!

Elizabeth Gagnon, podcast host of Teatime with Miss Liz, asked me recently what single word defines my character. I chose curious. I recall reviewing movie producer Brian Grazer‘s memoir, A Curious Mind, in which he claims that asking questions of influencers, such as directors and studio moguls with experience in showbiz, has been his secret to success. He goes on to claim that curiosity is the single most valuable trait that teachers should encourage in schoolchildren.

We’re now at a phase in the evolution of technology when rote memorization of names, dates, and events is no longer necessary. Decades ago, the invention of the handheld calculator eliminated one of the most annoying chores of my grade-school education – long division. Now with even the most inexpensive computer, you can make an Excel spreadsheet do calculus for you – and some apps have generation of complex curves built-in. That’s a subject I never even attempted because so many of my freshman-college classmates were failing the course. (I don’t like to fail, but when I have, I’ve learned more from the recovery than from any advice I ever got.)

What remains essential – fundamental – is curiosity.

We’re all online data drillers now. But if you don’t know what questions to ask, how can you progress? At anything?

My podcast GetPublished! Radio is on indefinite hiatus but remains a rich online archive. The late, great announcer Bill Navarro would introduce me:

And now, here’s your host Gerald Everett Jones. He has the answers because he’s already made all the mistakes himself!

That’s another thing about curiosity: It will make you skeptical about advice you hear – and presumed facts that might be little more than gossip. Curiosity will drive you to challenge opinions and check facts.

When I was in middle school, it was generally understood that studying for history exams was all about memorizing names, dates, and events. A great-uncle who was a believer in phrenology once felt the shape of my forehead and pronounced I would have a lifelong propensity for such rote learning.

But the most valuable thing I ever learned in any history class was a single sentence spoken by my seventh-grade teacher:

Remember that Russia will always covet warm-water ports.

Do you want the answer to why – in today’s news – Russia wants to guarantee its access to the Black Sea? Why Syria is their alternate route to the Mediterranean? Why building a pipeline from the oil fields surrounding the Caspian Sea – through Afghanistan – to the waters of the Indian Ocean was important enough to fight a war that destroyed the Soviet system?

Curiosity will take you there. And bear in mind that as wondrous as AI might be or become, nothing starts until you ask the robot a question.

Oh, and when you have opinions about what you discover, please argue with your comrades about it. I don’t mean argue as in provocation for a fistfight. I mean argue in the lawyers’ sense of developing a case and backing it up with evidence.

Yes, debate. That’s the skill the kids should learn after they’ve honed their curiosity and research skills. When I was in debate club in high school, we participated in competitions with clubs from other schools. The topic for the semester was set. Back then it was, “Should the United States commit to nuclear disarmament?” And our team engaged in furious (library) research.

Does it strike you that members of Congress seem to have forgotten the skills of serious debate? Wouldn’t it be sweet to hear some reasonable arguments?

The catch was, in those school debate competitions, your team wouldn’t find out which side of the question you were expected to take until right before the judges told you to begin!

“I could argue either side.” Most law-school students can claim that. And they might argue with passion, but they learn that passion shouldn’t make them deaf to their opponents’ objections.

But what about grade-school children in, say, Florida? In your town?

Preacher Evan Wycliff is a an amateur sleuth, a reluctant investigator because he has a curious mind and sympathy for unresolved personal problems. This first book in the series is free as Kindle or EPUB. The other two novels are $2.99 now.

Thinking About Thinking #7 – A Curious Mind – What’s More Important? Curiosity or Imagination?

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Here’s my book review of a curious mind by Brian Grazer, Hollywood mega-producer.

Brian Grazer is well known for his commercial and artistic successes, but I don’t believe he has any particular academic credentials as an educator. Nevertheless, teachers and parents everywhere should adopt the mantra of A Curious Mind:

Encouraging and stimulating curiosity should be the first priority of education.

Now, you’d think such a notion would be obvious. Apparently, it’s not – in this country, at least. The emphasis on standardized test results necessarily limits the permissible range of student curiosity. Teachers have to go by the book, as well. There’s the risk of embarrassment. Teachers and parents may not be comfortable with student queries, for which they have no ready answers:

  • What was before the Big Bang?
  • How many termites would it take to eat a house?
  • How can I get an agent?

Grazer admits he never finished law school. He took a job as a legal clerk at Warner Brothers. His duties involved running contracts to the offices in private homes of agents, producers, directors, and stars. He made a deliberate decision to use these meetings for what today we’d call networking. He’d insist that he was under strict instructions to hand-deliver the documents to the high-powered addressee. More often than not, he’d be received warmly and invited to sit and chat. And that’s when he says his curiosity took over. He engaged moguls and celebrities in conversation by asking them questions about themselves. And they were usually more than happy to talk.

Grazer cautions in the book that he never asked any of these new acquaintances for favors. He simply learned their likes and dislikes, their foibles and their fantasies. He thus learned the business from the inside, by politely asking question after question after question. So it was that exercising his genuine interest in people gave Brian Grazer the ability to work a room – and eventually a company town in a global industry.

But his curiosity didn’t stop there. He came to realize that the entertainment business was too confining to feed his curious mind. “For thirty-five years,” he writes, “I’ve been tracking down people about whom I was curious and asking if I could sit down with them for an hour. My only rule for myself was that the people had to be from the outside – from outside the world of movies and TV.”

A Curious Mind is essentially a celebrity autobiography. Grazer discloses that coauthor Charles Fishman wrote drafts based on a series of in-person interviews with him. It is an engaging story. And its scope extends beyond the basic notion of investigation is education to include the arc of a producer’s remarkable career and open-minded outlook on life.

As for Fishman, co-writers, ghosts, and editors face a difficult task in subordinating their own personal styles so they can capture their client’s unique voice. He is to be commended for capturing both Grazer’s still-boyish enthusiasm and his Hollywood savvy to generalize from all this. If you can stimulate curiosity in a child, you don’t even have to point it to the library.

There’s this new thing called Google. I wonder, was the Bing search engine name for Crosby or that sound you hear in your head when the light comes on?

In Clifford’s Spiral a stroke survivor tries to piece together the fragments of his memories. Was he the victim or the perpetrator? 2020 IPA Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction.