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Mysteries stir up feelings of curiosity and evoke an innate drive for answers in each of us—it’s part of the human condition! Think you’re immune? Check out this list and see if you can resist the magnetism of a good mystery.
Who stole the great Hope Diamond?
What killed the dinosaurs?
Who makes the finest pizza?
What’s in your brother’s dresser drawer?
Gotchaaaa, those are classic Mary-Kate and Ashley lyrics. But you get the point. (And a super catchy tune stuck in your head, if you’re lucky.)
We’re all super-duper snoopers in our own way, even if we weren’t part of the Olsen & Olsen Mystery Agency. And while my exclusion from that particular club is still a sore subject (I would’ve rocked that trench coat), I somehow managed to keep my life together, thanks in part to the other important mysteries I had to solve during my childhood. Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and the Boxcar children kept me plenty occupied as I spent hours hungrily scouring their pages, trying to solve the mystery before the characters could.
Encyclopedia Brown riddles were, of course, impossible—that kid was a straight genius, and I will not hear otherwise. And I don’t mean to brag, but eight-year-old me solved what Rainman meant the moment I heard the name of Dustin Hoffman‘s character, and it took Tom Cruise the whole movie, so you do the math. Wait, hold on, I do mean to brag. A solve that solid has earned some praise, so I’ll just go ahead and take a well-deserved bow. Then I’ll ask myself for the millionth time why the Olsens didn’t want me on their team. That’s the real mystery here.
Anyway, now that we’ve all had our fill of my self-indulgent silliness, let’s get back to why you’re here—for reasons why you should bring more mystery into your classroom! I am, as Aldous Huxley once said, completely on the side of mystery, so let’s see if I can convince you today to include a little more of it in your teaching! Usually when making such justifications, I like to bring in research and theoretical language to back me up, but with an enigmatic topic such as ”mystery,” that’s going to take some time to dig up. (Until then, if you know of research or theory to help me out, let me know in the comments!)
Since I do not have that particular type of knowledge readily available, I will take a leaf from critical pedagogy and recognize that there are other forms of knowledge that are just as valuable to explain human existence, and that includes lived experiences. Reason and logic are not the only ingredients that can be used to create knowledge— our worldly experiences also have wisdom to offer, and you can take that to the theoretical bank! Paulo Freire would be happy to cash that check.
And so rather than looking for scientific reasons as to why mysteries are so appealing to the human appetite, let us instead look to the perspectives of others to gain insight about ourselves. Here are five quotes about mystery that resonate with the spirit of critical theorists:
Albert Einstein
When first brainstorming this post, I likened a mystery to an apple- having one each day keeps disillusionment with learning away. Then I stumbled across this quote from Einstein, and I was thrilled to find that he may have followed my jingly, little prescription; for as it turns out, he required a daily dose of mystery in his life—
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity’
Few individuals have shaped so drastically the way we study the world around us as Einstein did. And if his search for answers was rooted in mystery, then imagine the possibilities if we were to ground a student‘s quest for knowledge in a mystery that was meaningful to their own life. Keeping student curiosity alive and well-informed is one of our greatest duties as critical educators, and we must not take that responsibility lightly.
A keen detective eye may have noticed that Einstein, a man of no specific religious affiliation, referred to curiosity as holy. (Psst, it’s in the article title, but you knew that.) He recognized that his search for knowledge and truth was part of something much bigger than he could comprehend. This part of the human experience connected him to the divine, something he had in common with our next thinker.
Zora Neale Hurston
Despite all his famed genius, Einstein would never been able to craft writing as exquisite as Zora Neale Hurston’s. And while in the Western world, we have historically chosen his type of knowledge over hers, both used their lived experiences to shape their work, and both contributed to humanity in equal measure. And mystery was an important part Hurston’s life, too—
Mystery is the essence of divinity.
Dust Tracks on the Road
Hurston’s life in the American South was filled with Black community and its beauty, but that reality was not being reflected in the stories of the time. So she chose to share her knowledge and create authentic art, despite how the weight of all the world’s mysteries can make us all feel small and powerless. Hurston did not let those mysteries crush her— she embraced them instead.
Just like the great thinkers before them, your students are feeling the great expanse of mysteries that lie ahead. You have the authority in your classroom to assure them that this is something we all feel as part of the human experience. Each of your students can be like Zora, and embrace the mystery!
Flat-Iron, a Maza Blaska Oglala Sioux Chief
In the Lakota spiritual tradition, Wankan-Tanka is the Great spirit whose sacred essence can be found in all living things. Often, they referred to this divine being as ”the Great Mystery,” recognizing that mystery is an essential part of life.
Flat-Iron mentions three different gifts the Great Mystery gave the Lakota: nature to sustain life, capacity to use wisdom, and hearts to recognize what is holy—
From Wakan-Tanka, the Great Mystery, comes all power. It is from Wakan-Tanka that the holy man has wisdom and the power to heal and make holy charms. Man knows that all healing plants are given by Wakan-Tanka, therefore they are holy. So too is the buffalo holy, because it is the gift of Wakan-Tanka.
The ability to recognize the beauty amidst the chaos of life has allowed us to survive as a species, and honoring the sacred in life is to wield knowledge in a uniquely human way, a way that has not been acknowledged by Western thinkers. As previously noted, critical educators recognize that human knowledge does not rest on logic alone, but on all the ways intelligences have shaped the human experience around the world and throughout time.
Great Indigenous leaders have known for generations that to be a knowledgeable human is to ground oneself in nature and use one’s heart to hold space for what is good and sacred to all life. And to solve the great mysteries that can be found within every aspect of our existence, we should heed their call for knowledge in our own classrooms that connect us to our hearts, our lands, and our world.
So remember— mysteries aren’t just about logic puzzles, they are also about engaging with the knowledge of our physical reality. Keep that nugget of wisdom in mind because we’re circling back to it in a bit.
Ray Bradbury
While the following quote vibrates at the same frequency as the familiar “the more you learn, the less you know” sentiment, this commonplace idea actually holds a profound meaning for the critical educator.
Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers.
All flesh is one: what matter scores?
Though there has been exponential progress made in technological advances during the last couple decades, there are just as many questions to be answered as ever! But how could that be?
Critical educators recognize that the search for knowledge never ends because knowledge as a concept can never be complete. There will always be more to know, and we only imagine it can be finished because it is easier for us to conceptualize.
But just because shoving something into a box is easier does not mean it is productive to our worldview. Angela Davis would advise you to stop presenting continuities as closures to yourself and your students. It isn’t our right to stamp endings all over their future— the infinite possibilities are what makes life exciting!
And I don’t mean to psychoanalyze the entire human species here, but perhaps this is how we deal with death. We pretend things can end when in fact they never do, even when we cease to exist. But when we console ourselves with this narrative, we end up passing a more constrained future onto our students.
It’s time to face the truth that you will never see the end of these stories, for they will continue long after you’re gone. And damn, I hate a cliffhanger. To be left with the ultimate cliffhanger of what happens to humanity, Greta Thunberg and all?! Woof, that is simply too much to bear— I’ll have a big helping of the “everything has closure” narrative, please.
That fear is real, but push past it and see the possibility in accepting the endlessness of the knowledge work ahead of us. Now, you can forgive yourself for not knowing everything. Sometimes, it seems the only way to be well-informed in this world is to have all the knowledge about all of the things, and I mean all of the things. That task is far too great for anyone to attempt, so curiosity can seem almost purposeless.
However, when you accept the truth of this critical tenet, you are able to not only identify the partial knowledge in yourself, but in others as well. Nobody has complete authority over any body of knowledge, for everyone abides by the law of partial knowledge, and this realization has been really liberating for me. I feel as if I am on democratic footing with everyone around me in a way I’ve never felt before, and I am excited to experience how this new sense of solidarity manifests in my life.
Perhaps I’ll follow in Greta’s footsteps and call out government officials and world experts who, despite all their intelligence, still need to hear the knowledge from even the youngest among us.
Sue Monk Kidd
This final quote speaks directly to how I feel now that I have the language of critical pedagogy to help triangulate my positioning on this crazy, blue marble. But as James Baldwin notes, the world is not really anxious to reward the search for big mysteries, so we eventually are forced to focus on nothing but the small. But as these previous thinkers have shown us, the big questions are at the heart of the human experience, and perhaps teachers can be the ones to bring this truth back into our social consciousness.
I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don’t even know it.
The Secret Life of Bees
While I feel many adults can relate to the experience Kidd presents here, it seems to me that children are buzzing with the energy that comes with holding mystery actively at the front of one’s conscious. I know when I was a child, mystery was all consuming— the adult world was unintelligible, but I didn’t let it bother me. I assumed that as time went on, my questions would be answered, and so slowly, the big questions about humanity fell to the back of my mind.
Over time I have developed an understanding about how the world works, but it wasn’t until recently that I began dusting off those big questions. They had been waiting to be explored by the part of my heart I had cultivated in childhood, the part that beat with the particular type of curiosity that adults don’t usually take the time to indulge. What is the purpose of education? How do we enact true justice for our students? What is my role as an educator? Have you really thought out the answers to these questions? Now is a great time to start.
We must take a lesson from our students and awaken that childlike curiosity that lies dormant within us so that we can reflect on whether or not we are moving in the right direction when it comes to liberating our students. And by harnessing our long-lost curiosity, we can keep searching for these answers, using all of the different forms of knowledge that come with the expansive human experience.
Though mysteries have always had a strong gravitational pull on me, it wasn’t until I was introduced to the language of critical pedagogy that I began to understand why.
Hopefully I’ve been able to pass some of that on to you today! My blog is constantly updating with new ways to implement the knowledge of critical pedagogy in your classroom, so please explore the articles to keep your curiosity aflame. If I’ve sold you on the importance of bringing mystery to your classroom, great news!!
The Learning League Adventures are a collection of mysteries, created with the vision of a critical pedagogue (me!). Made for 3rd-5th graders, these resources present math and reading problems within the framework of a mystery that matters. The lessons are written to spark conversations about the big questions that are part of the human experience. Give one of my FREEBIES a try. Your students will be enthralled, and you will be impressed by the insight and knowledge they have when it comes to the biggest of questions.
Finally, I’ll leave you with one last quote, starting where we began, with Albert Einstein:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead — his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
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