"Science is just formalized curiosity."
That's what retired astronaut, engineer, fighter pilot, musician and writer Chris Hadfield said about science literacy. Children are innately curious about the world around them. Sadly, curiosity isn’t always encouraged or nurtured in formal education – despite the fact that curious children perform better.
Researchers from the University of Michigan CS Mott Children’s Hospital and the Center for Human Growth and Development investigated curiosity in 6,200 children, part of the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The researchers gauged levels of curiosity when the children were babies, toddlers and preschoolers through direct assessments and parent questionnaires.
They found that the most curious children performed better in reading and math, and disadvantaged children had the strongest connection between curiosity and performance. Further, the researchers found that when it came to academic achievement, the ability to stay focused and, for example, not be distracted by a thunderstorm, was less important than curiosity – the questions children might have about that storm.
That curiosity is integral to learning shouldn’t be a surprise. We are hard-wired to be curious, and it is that curiosity that helps us learn about the world from infancy. In 2007, researchers tracked the number of questions asked by children aged 14 months to five years. On average, the children asked an average of 107 questions an hour.
But research from Susan Engel, author of The Hungry Mind and a leading international authority on curiosity in children, finds questioning drops like a stone once children start school. When her team logged classroom questions, she found the youngest children in an American suburban elementary school asked between two and five questions in a two-hour period. As they got older the children gave up asking altogether. There were two-hour stretches in fifth grade where 10 and 11-year-olds failed to ask their teacher a single question.
Once a little boy went to school. It was quite a big school, but when the boy found he could go right to his room from the playground outside he was happy, and the school didn’t seem quite so big anymore. One morning when the little boy had been in school for a while, the teacher said, “Today, we are going to make a picture.” “Good,” thought the little boy. He liked to make pictures. He could make lions and tigers and trains and boats.
He took out his crayons and began to draw. But the teacher said, “Wait, it’s not time to begin.” And she waited until everyone looked ready. “Now”, said the teacher, “we are going to make flowers. “”Good,” thought the little boy, and he began to make beautiful flowers with his orange and pink and blue crayons. But the teacher said, “Wait.” She drew a picture on the blackboard. It was red with a green stem. “There, now you may begin.”
The little boy looked at the teacher’s flower. He liked his better, but he did not say this. He just turned his paper over and made a flower like the teacher’s. It was red with a green stem.
On another day the teacher said, “Today we are going to make something with clay.” “Good” thought the little boy. He could make all kinds of things with clay – snakes and snowmen and elephants and mice – and he began to pinch and pull his ball of clay.
But again the teacher said, “Wait, I will show you how.” And she showed everyone how to make one deep dish. The little boy just rolled his clay in a round ball and made a dish like the teacher’s.
The little boy learned to wait and make things just like the teacher’s and he didn’t make things of his own anymore.
And then it happened that the little boy and his family moved to another city and the boy had to go to another school. On the first day he went to the school the teacher said, “Today we are going to make a picture. “Good”, thought the little boy and he waited for the teacher to tell him what to do.
But the teacher didn’t say anything. She just walked around the room. When she came to the boy she said, “Don’t you want to make a picture?” “Yes, “said the boy. “What are we going to make?” “Well, I don’t know until you make it, “said the teacher. “How should I make it?” said the boy. “Why, anyway you like!” “And any colour?” “Any colour” said the teacher. “If everyone made the same thing in the same colour, how would I know what and which was which?” “I don’t know”, said the boy, and he began to draw a flower.
It was red with a green stem.
The Little Boy by Helen E. Buckley, 1961.
Shut up and Learn
Let’s be realistic. Natural curiosity really doesn't fit nicely into standards, assessment, and benchmarks used to generate the data streams that measure performance. And, oh, the time it will take! It’s hard enough to get through the curriculum as it is without giving students the chance to ask questions that might take us off track. No. We must keep the students focused on what we want them to know.
Don't be misled... cultivating curiosity is easy but killing curiosity is harder than you think. It will take a very intentional approach. Here are five strategies to thwart all those pesky questions and stay focused on the "real learning” that we can measure and track.
1. Dictate all learning and eliminate student choice.
The people that determine the curriculum know what meaningful learning is; leave that to the experts. If it's not in the curriculum or the test, it's probably not important. Students don't know what they need to know. Our job is to tell them and keep them focused long enough to take the test. Their job is to produce the right answers and question nothing.
2. Focus on the answers not the process.
The real world presents challenges that are messy and fuzzy and sometimes without an obvious "right answer." But in education, we are evaluated based upon our ability to color in the right circle. Focus on the answers rather than the process. The process is much harder to grade and impossible to record on a results graph.
3. Don't mistake play and experimentation as real learning.
Real learning has been researched, can be replicated, and is always measured with a grade. Incorporating "informal learning" that allows children to wonder, explore and investigate can derail you from the lesson plans, disrupt the entire process, and waste a lot of valuable time.
4. Keep an orderly classroom.
Art, music, and physical activities are distracting to the rigors of real learning. Moreover, they are messy, noisy, difficult to assess. Focused students are quiet students, and a tidy classroom keeps them quiet. Don't dilute serious learning with anything that could be construed as fun.
5. Present yourself as the omniscient expert.
If you really want to kill the curiosity in your students, never let them catch you questioning, exploring, or wondering. You are the expert; you are the model of knowledge; you have all the answers. Your job is to transfer that knowledge on to them. Their job is to accept it blindly without question.
The sooner we figure out how to eliminate the natural curiosity in students that feeds inquiry-based meaningful learning, the sooner we can focus on what really matters - that which we can feed through a scantron machine and measure in binary terms.
Because that's how to foster a love of learning that will serve students into adulthood .... right?
[[[[[[[ Cue the collective eye-roll ]]]]]
Cheers to the amazing educators who are cultivating curiosity in their classrooms!
Luckily, there are some exceptional schools that encourage curiosity. Sudbury Valley School (https://sudburyvalley.org) has no curriculum, tests or examinations. Learning is entirely driven by student's curiosity!