Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures

The Radically Curious leader is intrinsically multilingual, looking beyond the literal language of traditional books to read culture as a set of stories. Developing this cultural literacy requires that we (1) be honest about naming legacy narratives, (2) listen deeply in order to identify upending indicators, and (3) begin to imagine and articulate

Education is a pipeline for young people to enter the economy, rather than their lives or the conversation the world is engaged in.

Stories are a calm anchor amid the storm of uncertainty. And in uncertain in-between times, the stories we tell ourselves are powerful frameworks that help us work out who we are in the present moment and what we value. They lure us into becoming our aspirational selves.

Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being “with it.”

our contemporary world has privatized much of public life. We retreat into our homes, onto our screens, and into our echo chambers. Immersing ourselves in information mediated by algorithms. Always connected, yet rarely connecting with one another. The result is we are less and less practiced in the craft of conversation, our ability to hear one an

Curiosity has the opposite effect of what Kristof described as Trump’s “corrosive acid.” It has the magical powers of rebuilding and reconnecting. Inquiry, when done honestly, builds bridges within communities.

The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.

What if we re-embraced activism as the intentional acts carried out by each generation to guide us from legacy narratives to new challenger narratives?

Thriving takes both labor and leisure. It takes curiosity. An education system that segregates labor and leisure and that removes curiosity from our essential needs drives and sustains inequity and must be challenged.