by Joshua Gibbs

Classical educators can’t stop talking about wonder. In the last several years, “wonder” has become a fixture in conference talks, blog posts, podcast themes, but especially in ad copy. When you’re pitching classical education, make sure you get the word “wonder” in there somewhere. Wonder is so hot right now. Wonder.  

Wonder is so hot, in fact, that the most fashionable and zeitgeisty tastemakers are getting in on the action. This week, promotions have begun running for Meghan Markle’s latest Netflix show, With Love, Meghan. The tagline: “Create wonder in every moment.” 

The two minute trailer for With Love, Meghan is one Wendell Berry quote shy of classical Christian intellectual property. Meghan describes the importance of learning and joy while harvesting honey from bees, decorating donuts with flowers, furthering community, and, yes, “creating wonder” with artfully arranged vegetable platters. If a certain publishing house decided to start producing “classical Christian home decor programming,” it might look and sound a good bit like With Love, Meghan. It’s just so #incarnational.  

There’s good reason for classical educators to fixate on wonder, but that fixation has been heavily commodified, and so use of the term is no longer commensurate with understanding of the word. Regardless of what “wonder” means in the writings of Augustine or Aristotle, it has come to signify little more than the leisurely enjoyment of bourgeois tastes. “Wonder” means the fourth graders are going to draw pictures of flowers instead of memorizing terms like pistil, stamen, and stem. “Wonder” means we’re going off grid by passing around genuine Native American arrowheads as opposed to merely showing students a YouTube video about Sacagawea. Restoring “wonder” to education means a series of Instagram-worthy moments soundtracked by Yo-Yo playing Bach. Classical educators have come to speak of “wonder” as a thing which is obviously good, obviously attractive, and painless to acquire. In fact, it’s bizarre that more people aren’t experiencing wonder given they could easily start doing so this afternoon.   

Given the popularity of the term, people who have no interest in real “wonder” have plenty of reason to use the term. Whenever an abstract concept like “wonder” becomes fashionable, there’s money to be made in offering access to that concept at the lowest possible price. In other words, if “community” is hot and you want it, would you rather get “community” from a school that required a lot of you every week, or a school that required little of you? Would you rather get “community” from a school that will give your kids B’s or A’s? A school that lets parents walk all over teachers still has reason to tell prospective parents, “We’re a really tight-knit community,” simply because the claim communicates $16k-per-year-tuition values. And the school down the street which is genuinely tight-knit has every reason in the world to start speaking in a pointed way about the difference between real community and fake.  

As such, I would like to try to rescue the term “wonder” from its increasingly cliche status. I would like to do this to shame the bandwagon jumpers who don’t really care about wonder, but merely want to harness the fiscal power of a low-hanging fashionable idea. I also want to do this to exonerate the (far fewer) institutions and intellectuals who are pursuing the real deal.   

Fourteen Theses on Wonder 

1. To discuss a thing, contemplate a thing, or enjoy a thing—either by tasting, hearing, or seeing—is not necessarily to wonder at that thing. This is true even when the thing being discussed or enjoyed is very good. Very few acts of thought or perception constitute wonder.  

2. Wonder cannot be scheduled, appointed, commodified, coerced, or sold. Unlike wisdom, wonder cannot even be offered to another. Wonder cannot be forced any more than contrition may be forced; however, adopting the posture of contrition often leads to genuine contrition.  

3. Wonder is a subliminal response to the perception of transcendence; for this reason, no man may decide to wonder. Nonetheless, we can create situations favorable to wonder. Our actions may bid wonder. While certain things are more apt to induce wonder than others, a mote of dust rightly understood may bring about the deepest wonder. Likewise, the doctrine of the Trinity or Caravaggio’s The Seven Acts of Mercy may inspire no wonder at all. 

4. A man may wish to experience wonder but be incapable of doing so.  

5. Many people adopt the posture of wonder without actually experiencing wonder; wonder is often pantomimed.  

6. The experience of wonder implies virtue; anyone who claims to experience wonder is also declaring, “I have done something virtuous"; people who often talk about their own virtuous actions are usually boors. 

7. The pleasure offered by wonder is like the pleasure of any virtue; virtue paradoxically offers a foretaste of the same pleasure it defers for later.  

8. Hence, wonder requires a long attention span; prolonged exposure to scrolling media, blockbuster entertainment, and screens in general makes wonder increasingly difficult, if not impossible.  

9. Like love, like friendship, like Chanel handbags, wonder is often faked. Like fake love, fake wonder is destructive to the soul in ways that often take years to manifest. 

10. Unlike curiosity, wonder is never satisfied; in this life, all wonder is necessarily unfulfilled; like hunger or thirst, wonder is quite vexing.   

11. One may enjoy a wonderful thing without experiencing wonder; impatient people often take pleasure from things when they could have pursued wonder. Receiving pleasure from a thing often puts an end to the soul’s search for wonder. 

12. Most people who experience wonder do not know to call it “wonder.” 

13. Wonder necessarily involves self-forgetfulness; in wonder, Peter walked on water; wonder should not be confused with the revelations that occur later, once wonder has ended, and the experience of wonder is being contemplated from a cool distance.  

14. Wonder arrives in silence; people who talk a lot rarely experience wonder; the fact a man is able to speak accurately about wonder does not imply he regularly experiences wonder. The author of these theses is not necessarily implying that he has ever experienced wonder.