As stoic author Ryan Holiday put it, “The opposite of curiosity is certainty. You can’t learn what you think you already know.”
I’ve been turning that quote over in my mind lately—which is, perhaps, the most curiosity inducing thing a quote can do.
Curiosity is having a moment. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranks “curiosity and lifelong learning” among the top 10 core skills required in today’s workforce—and employers expect its importance to grow. “Spark Curiosity” is also one of ISTE+ASCD’s eight Transformational Learning Principles, reflecting the belief that when educators connect content to students’ prior knowledge, experiences, and passions, something shifts. Learning becomes less about compliance and more about discovery.
Yet the research tells a sobering story. As Isabelle Hau writes in this issue, kindergarteners ask as many as 26 questions an hour. By middle school, they ask fewer than two. The decline isn’t developmental—it’s systemic. Curiosity doesn’t disappear; it gets
designed out.
designed out.
This issue is about designing it back in. It’s about making room for students to do what comes naturally to them: wander and wonder.
Whether it’s Scott Shigeoka reminding us that curiosity isn’t just about seeking answers but turning toward people with genuine openness, or Aleta Margolis arguing that teacher curiosity must come first—that teachers can’t cultivate in students what they haven’t tended in themselves—a common thread runs through every article: curiosity requires conditions. Safety. Time. Permission to not know.
Worksheets won’t get us there (p. 28). Neither will rushed research projects or teaching to the test. What will? Intentional design, relational trust, and the courage to follow a student’s question even when it takes a lesson somewhere unexpected.
I hope this issue gives you both the inspiration and the practical tools to make your classroom—and your own practice—a little more wonderstruck.
