Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures

what is education for? The purpose of education has held different narratives throughout history. Is it preparing young people to join the contemporary conversation the world is engaged in? Or merely to join the workforce as skilled laborers?

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.”

Society is deeply uncomfortable with curiosity as a way of living, leading, and doing daily business. Yet, ironically, curiosity is the fuel to transformative leadership and value creation.

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

If we are to take on the task of renewing the world, we need to care so deeply about the world and about the future that we are willing to unlearn many of the mental models and ideologies that have been directly or indirectly taught to us. To do this requires Radical Curiosity.

The blueprints of the past are artifacts of the thinking that created the very problems we seek to confront. We need to discard these outdated models that no longer serve us.

I think of the act of naming as diagnosis. Though not all diagnosed diseases are curable, once you know what you’re facing, you’re far better equipped to know what you can do about it.

Radical Curiosity begins with first-principles thinking. It requires breaking down ideas, assumptions, and narratives to their most essential components and then reconstructing them anew.

Today, it may not merely be that we confuse process with substance; rather, our failure to question our processes or interrogate our actions may be symptomatic of a more significant concern: Curiosity is an endangered species.