The flight from wonder

When I ran my schools in Cambridge, I resisted conformity. There was no dress code, no obsession with hair length or colour. My role was to guide students through their examinations and, where possible, help them reach the universities of their choice.
I recall a mother who phoned to thank me for her daughter’s academic progress. At her previous school, the focus had been on uniforms, corridor discipline, hair length and shoe styles — trivialities that vanish into irrelevance at university. Her daughter thrived under our approach. Yet, after praising us, the mother asked if I could persuade her daughter to dress more conservatively and stop dyeing her hair a different colour every week. I explained, politely, that we had no such rules. Her daughter went on to excel and secure a place at a good university.
On another occasion, a father asked me during an admissions interview: “But what about character building?” I asked him, in return, what sort of character he had in mind. He had no answer. Too often, “character building” is simply a euphemism for making children conform. My responsibility as principal was not to mould characters but to nurture individuality and critical thinking. Watching my wife’s young relatives recently, I was struck by how much energy small children possess. They cannot keep still. They dart about, fascinated by everything, their minds endlessly curious.
Meanwhile, we adults sat quietly, seemingly drained of energy, often oblivious to our surroundings. As Albert Einstein once observed, 'growing up is a flight from wonder.' Somewhere along the way, our curiosity fades. We stop asking questions. We conform. Children have not yet been forced through what I call the 'sausage machine' of education. They have not been indoctrinated by newspapers, television or adult authority. They remain free of the curse we euphemistically call “education.”
This philosophy was not mine alone. AS Neill’s famous Summerhill School went even further. Students were not obliged to attend lessons at all. Teachers made their classes so engaging that students wanted to be there. Far from chaos, Summerhill produced strong academic results. When asked what he would consider a failure in his students’ careers, Neill famously replied: “I would regard it as a tremendous failure on my part if any of my students became Prime Minister.” I share his sentiment. In Britain’s so-called representative democracy, the pursuit of political office is too often a pursuit of power for its own sake. Our politicians lie as a matter of course. Indeed, the system depends on it. Voters know this, yet still vote. Perhaps democracy itself would collapse if our UK politicians ever told the truth.
And so I return to those children, brimming with energy and wonder. Their curiosity is natural, unfiltered and unafraid. As educators, we should do less indoctrinating and more liberating. Our task is not to produce compliant workers or ambitious power-seekers, but to help young people become individuals, people who live happily, pursue careers they enjoy and contribute meaningfully to society.
Children hemmed in by endless rules and rigid conformity often rebel, or worse, they lose their curiosity altogether. But when schools allow freedom of thought, of dress and of expression, students discover responsibility for themselves. They do not need to be policed into learning. They choose to learn because the field is wide enough for them to explore. Growing up may often be a flight from wonder. But perhaps education, if done differently, could help us hold on to it.

Karim Easterbrook The writer is a Former Cambridge School Principal and Author