The Power of Deliberate Wandering
It is a porous half plan that insists on remaining receptive to possibility. By Zoe, 19, Manchester.
Deliberate wandering is basically an open container. It is a porous half plan that insists on remaining receptive to possiblity. Education editor Zoe Rabbani walks us through her year of useless thinking and how it changed her life.
In my last year of secondary education, I was in a constant state of stress. Every moment I wasn’t studying was consumed by guilt and my hair got super greasy. Why? Because that spring, my exams began. Exams that marked the end of my thirteen years of school, and would decide my future. I try not to think a lot about that year, mainly because I still have nightmares about missing exams or running out of time. In my reflections, I see the girl I was: a bookworm who had stopped reading, a budding author who hadn’t written fiction in years, an artist who never painted, a person who had curiosity about the world, but had lost it somewhere along the way. The stress and time of school had overtaken my life and blocked out the rest. Then, all of a sudden, those thirteen years were over. I was free! And while we were encouraged to shuffle onto the next phase in our education, I took a year off before heading to university. Twelve months of traveling ensued, as did twelve months of no academic responsibility.
So here’s what happened: Every day was different, and there was no top-down structure. No rules. Every day I let myself be guided by what interested me, wandering between hobbies without the stress of responsibilities hanging over me. I read two or three books a week, I wrote 100,000 words of a story I had wanted to write for years and I tore through sketchbooks. I changed my deferred university course to something that would allow me to be more creative and, most importantly, I learned what I needed to change in order to be happy and to love myself.
The specifics aren’t really important, but what they do signify is the kind of explosive creativity, thinking and development that can come with deliberate wandering, when boundaries are broken and rules are challenged. Today, I look at who I was in 2016 compared to who I am now and have become convinced that the way we educate our youth needs a fundamental change. We are not giving young adults the life skills critical for tackling the world with fresh eyes and a fresh mind, skills necessary for changing the world.
“I wish school was altogether open ended” — Lula, 20, Detroit
This is not a new theory. In 1939, as the world faced different crises, philosopher Alexander Flexner published “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.” In a time where politicians and the public were demanding immediate solutions for immediate problems, Flexner was championing the importance of unchecked human curiosity. He argued that throughout human history, the greatest discoveries were rarely the result of direct investigation but instead of “deliberate wanderings”, discovery through a simple love of learning.
But we are not teaching kids to wander. We’re putting them through an antiquated system designed for another day: thirteen years, seven hours a day, one teacher, thirty students and the same curriculum design around the world. English, math, science, subjects rooted in centuries of wild human curiosity and creativity, have all become more about memorizing than questioning. Can you imagine Galileo or Plato fulfilling their legacies after being squished so unceremoniously through this cookie cutter system? Probably not, and lucky for us they weren’t! Instead, they were allowed the freedom to intellectually roam and ask their own questions. The most creative and revolutionary figures in history did what they did because they were allowed, even forced, to think outside the box. Enter the Industrial Revolution with its factories and public school systems designed to churn out millions of assembly line labourers. Sadly, this remains the foundation of our system today.
“In places like Vietnam and Singapore, I’d like school to be more about students/pupils being unique individuals, taking initiatives and dreaming big, rather than following the safe conventions.” — Nikki, 22, Vietnam
Ok, I can sense your skepticism. “The current system isn’t that broken. Don’t young people need structure instead of this concept of ‘wandering?’” Well, yes it is that broken and yes we do need to wander (and that doesn’t just go for kids). Why? Let’s make it simple — what is the purpose of an education system today? It is to prepare young people to positively contribute to society and be well-rounded, elastic adults capable of adjusting to an ever-changing world. Creative thinkers who don’t realize there is a box to think outside of. People properly equipped to solve today’s most urgent problems like climate change, war, illness and inequality. If change isn’t coming from the next generation, from where will it come?
I’m not saying that the solution is a year of travel. But if we are to change things for the better, then it is the responsibility of our education system to carve out space for our students to wander, to follow their imagination and its endless stream of curiosity. Let them set up their own projects and investigate what matters to them. Let them go outside and explore. Let them fall and learn from that physical experience. There are already radical experiments in (private?!) education around the world that are redefining the learning experience and giving more power to the student: Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR), an enquiry and project-based learning system, is gaining traction; experimental primary schools like Portfolio School and AltSchool are encouraging student agency, and Blended Learning in classrooms is giving each student their own individualized learning path based on their needs.
“I just use trial and error in the real world to learn by doing’. Seeing what other people do and dream helps.” — Arielle, 17, New York
Think about it, who knows what we might come up with when we let our minds (or more to the point young people’s minds) run wild? Maybe we will get more artistic scientists and left side brain artists. Maybe we will solve global warming. Maybe we will be more content. Maybe we will overthrow the entire system and take away all your money (just kidding… not!). Whatever ends up happening, new questions will be asked and new answers will be found. If we want to fulfill the true purpose of education — to better society — then it is time to build a system that teaches the next generation to deliberately wander.
