Radical Curiosity: Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures

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.”

to author more beautiful futures, we must imagine and express what a fundamentally different possibility might be. As the award-winning poet and author Ocean Vuong described with stunning clarity: We often tell our students, “The future is in your hands.” But I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you want to

A cultural interregnum is a transition between fundamentally different sets of values catalyzing an evolution in shared frameworks of the human experience. During a cultural interregnum, ideas from the past decline, as we question the legacy narratives and, in turn, the norms, beliefs, and mindsets that we inherited from preceding generations. Simu

In the worst of these conditions, knowledge is wielded as a tool of power through which education systems can actively oppress entire populations, preventing the awareness of their own agency in their lives.

Identifying a commonly held belief, peeling back the assumptions it is built upon, and restlessly seeking interventions and leverage points for greater impact is the life cycle of a challenger.

Society is stitched together through a shared code for what we believe and how those beliefs translate to the way we live. In the same way that the operating system of our computers dictates the basic functions it performs, culture is a kind of operating system that dictates how society functions. A set of rules, normative behaviors, and collective

Radical Curiosity questions commonly held beliefs to imagine flourishing futures. To be radically curious is to challenge the narratives inherited from the past and author new stories that reflect who we are and what we value today. It is to recognize when our collective wisdom, like any outdated technology, needs an operating system upgrade.

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 We need to discard these outdated models that no longer serve us.

Nor should the social contract be static. To remain relevant in changing times, such a contract requires amendments. It should exist in a constant state of redesign.