Boredom, Contemplation, and Liberation: Education in an Age of Distraction

Boredom is an inevitable part of the human condition–but teachers and students alike get the message that boredom should be avoided at all costs, especially in the classroom. In this talk I make a case for how and why we should suffer boredom well rather than evade it. Boredom offers educative possibilities, and a person’s ability to cope with and constructively manage boredom is an essential part of being educated. Those incapable of enduring boredom live at the mercy of interests and external stimuli, blind to the fickle nature of interests that motivate learning. The aim of a liberal education is freedom through the development of autonomy and critical thinking. When schools graduate students who seek to avoid boredom and are unable to endure it–and do not see why they should bother being bored at all–they fail to cultivate liberal learners. To be truly free, one must be able to stand being bored.