Wonder: Temporality and educational value

This paper argues that wonder’s temporality and temperament help
explain its educational value; and that to some extent its educational
value is closely connected with its temporality and its temperament.
Much of ordinary life, including education (in the common, descriptive
sense of the term) has a temporality that is at odds with care-full attention
to the world and allows us little time to think and reflect on the
meaning of things or our own actions. Wonder interrupts that stream;
it arrests our attention, lets us dwell with things, gives us pause for
thought. It thus facilitates truly educational experiences that transform
our outlook on the world, and whose temporality falsifies the idea of
learning as a linear, additive process.