DURING a chat with someone, if I mention anything strange, unusual or different, I would be shocked if a sense of curiosity flared up.

Hardly ever do I hear ‘tell me more – what’s that about, what does that mean, how did that happen. . .?

I could have revealed that 10 of my relatives died in the sinking of the Titanic, or next week I’m going up in a hot air balloon over the tar sands of Athabascar in Alberta, or last week I saw five dead otters floating in the derelict canal in Chalford . . .and there would hardly be a break in the conversation.

No questions, no apparent interest, no stirred imagination.

I have a dear friend in Sussex who, no matter what startling news I might mention during our phone conversation, always meets it with silence.

Are you still there, I ask? Are you still there?

Don’t people wonder anymore about how things happen, where they come from, what brings something about, who dunnit and why?

I just read a story about a new book on this issue called Curious: The Desire To Know And Why Your Future Depends On It by Ian Leslie.

He has a little girl and loves the way she asks questions.

He has learned that if a baby’s parent answers its wordless question, such as when it points to something as if to ask does it speak, bite, fly etc and the parent replies in some way, the baby will point to something else.

But if the gesture is ignored, the child will stop pointing.

Curiosity is contagious and so is ‘incuriosity’.

The education system teaches (or tries to) and prepares students for specific jobs and how to copy with ‘the system’ they will soon be entering.

But it doesn’t teach them to be curious learners.

So, as Ian Leslie points out, we end up with mostly uninspired students and mediocre professionals.

Knowledge is lacklustre without the companion of curiosity. So surely there’s a challenge to find ways to prod people to be hungry to learn, ask questions, probe, create, find worthwhile alternatives to ignorant behaviour and actions.

I watched a TV programme about police in Sheffield trying to deal with unruly and badly behaved louts causing disruption.

All the police did was move them on, reprimand them.

If curiosity held sway, surely they could come up with methods of getting to the roots of the problem – issue citations requiring attendance at some central spot where the misbehaving would have to gather to discuss why they were being so obnoxious.

Are they unhappy, frustrated, bad home life, jobless, poor, feeling let down, bored . . .?

They could discuss various issues, ask questions, make a list of ‘problems’, and propose some sort of solution.

As Stephen Fry puts it: “The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care much.

“They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

Montaigne, the French essayist advised us to ‘rub and polish our brains against others.”

Well, get on with it.

Read more, ask more questions and in addition to a more stimulating life, your mental decline may slow by a third.