What Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Teaches Us About Teaching

“Alice was getting very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and having nothing to do…when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her…and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it.” So starts Alice’s adventure, and so starts a worldwide obsession with Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, and Wonderland. 

Published in 1865 by Lewis Carroll, a mathematician at Oxford, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland continues to fascinate the collective imagination of each generation. In 2010, the film Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton grossed over $1 billion. Why would people want to spend $1 billion to watch an adaptation of a children’s story written over 160 years ago? Does this global admiration attest to some deep-seated, universal desire within us? The answer is a billion times yes. And this story gives us the key to fulfilling this desire, a desire that beats in the heart of every student sitting in a classroom. 

The parallels between Alice and students in a classroom are striking. Most teachers know the difference between the student who is the Alice at the beginning of the story—apathetic and getting very tired while sitting on the bank—and the Alice who is driven by a burning curiosity, running across the field after a white rabbit. Any teacher worth her salt will nurture the environment for the latter. Why, then, are many classrooms across the United States filled with the former Alice? What is this children’s story teaching us about what makes a very tired Alice into the Alice who’s willing to run down a rabbit hole? 

“So, she was considering in her own mind, (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid,) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies….” We have all witnessed students who, like Alice, are absorbed with considering pleasurable diversions while the lesson makes them feel “very sleepy and stupid.” And there seem to be innumerable classrooms in innumerable cities that make innumerable students feel very sleepy and stupid. Then there are the lucky ones who have embarked upon a lesson, or at least witnessed one, or perhaps heard of one at some remote classical school that has awakened a sleepy Alice and caused a curiosity to burn inside her because “suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.” These “white rabbits” are topics that permeate the classical curriculum and allow students to see the connections between different disciplines. 

Every classroom always has the potential of having a white rabbit run by their students. Large class sizes, testing, and government-run agendas erect insurmountable barriers, keeping white rabbits from coming anywhere near the classroom, but the possibility still exists. But the lectures, textbooks, cramming of vocabulary and formulas for the next test, opinions without proof, and jargon of popular memes keep Alice too busy and distracted to see white rabbits. Then there are small class sizes, parent-invested children, and classically run classrooms that topple down barriers to white rabbits running wild. Defining terms to understand the ideas or logos, reading Shakespeare and searching for the meaning hidden in its structure, questioning and challenging our own philosophical assumptions and biases, and putting ourselves in someone else’s world by debating both sides of a resolution cultivate an environment to let in the white rabbit from Wonderland. 

Alice is a story of “the dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new, / In friendly chat with bird or beast— / And half believe it true.” The key to fulfilling the deep-seated, universal desire for something beyond this world is this land of wonders wild and new. Wonderland resonates with the truth within our souls that this cannot be all there is. This truth is denied to students at every postmodern, materialistic school; and yet they are irresistibly drawn to it. And this truth is proved with every iteration of this land of wonders, whether it be Wonderland, Narnia, Middle-earth, Wakanda, or even Barbie Land. Most of the answers to the unspoken question may be unsatisfactory and even destructive, but the soul keeps asking the question and seeking the answer. Is there another world that exists outside of the crowd-conforming, multiple-choice, standardized, career-planning, college-readiness, liked or loser, fearful, anxious world? 

These stories of Wonderlands, with the help of teachers, hold the key. Let the white rabbit loose, pull the curtain back, show students that all the particulars point to the very thing their soul desires. There is a unifying principle tying together all things. There is a universal idea, a metaphysical reality, that every soul knows exists, which is why the soul of every student keeps searching for it and paying to see it in literature and film. Point to it in the classroom, let them think about it, and let them dream about it, because it is there. Wonderland exists. 

If we continue to deny its existence, then students will continue to seek it outside the classroom. But what Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is teaching us is that if we let loose the white rabbit of universal ideas that encompass the reality of all that students observe and experience, we may awaken the burning curiosity that will give them the courage to run into the rabbit hole and fall and connect to the metaphysical, unmeasurable, divine spiritual world, to seek the face of God and meet Him in their education.