Tag Archives: curiosity

The Curious Kick the Can of Facts into Possibilities

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Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures – Lovelle Drachman.

How many times does a teacher prepare and ask a question in the hopes that no child will ask “Why?” or “What if …?” or say “Ya, but…” In the explanation of 15th explorers when asked what lay beyond the undrawn borders on maps of the day, they would say “There be dragons!” I know teachers who consider open-ended questions as doorways into the land of their dragons. What is a teacher to do if she does not know the answer or cannot make an informed and understandable explanation? Hello, curiosity!

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. – Arthur Ward

In an educational industry held accountable with high stakes achievement tests, right answers are gold and a teacher who packs children with facts is a high-quality tradesman. However, in a child-based environment a teacher who inspires children to learn is a magician. It is magical to watch a child see the power of inquiry and questioning to learn something new or to change what they know into more powerful knowledge. Inspiration that lights the imagination for learning is magical. Once inspired, curious children are free to roam the world.

A society that wants right answers shutters curiosity.

We are a society wanting correct answers. We also believe that a person who knows the correct answers is a winner, not just on Jeopardy, but in the game of life. For millennia, knowledge was power and clerics and priests guarded access to knowledge. An ability to read opened minds to questions so literacy was afforded only to the chosen few. Gutenberg’s press ended that darkness and created common access to documents leading to greater literacy. People wanted to know. Today we are a literate nation. We have access to so much information that reading everything is impractical. Instead, we do not read to answer questions; we ask Siri, or Google the question, or make inquiries in AI. Answers to everything is a keystroke away.

If correct answers appear instantly on our screen, how far down on the screen do we need to read? Students tell me “Only the first sentences. Siri and Google begin each response with a statement that answers the question. I do not need to read any more than that.” The same students add “That satisfies my teachers.”

Our ingenuity in creating databases is that we can readily access and processing tools that allow us to re-assemble information to stand for what we know is becoming an academic dilemma. Secondary and collegiate teachers spend more time detecting plagiarism in documents students submit than ascertaining the insights the student has learned. Heck, they also use AI to read and grade student submissions.

The Big Duh! Ask for possibilities and probabilities.

Soon there will be little daylight between a person who knows the answer and a person who can digitally obtain the answer. The speed of response will be indistinguishable. The answers will be the same or virtually the same – what is the difference? Every student will be Siri’s echo.

With a political poke: when we are told that facts are not true and that lies are alternative facts, the knowledge of correct answers is dubious.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. – Oscar Wilde

Where does schooling enter this story? Students have told me that “I do not need to attend class to learn (fill in the name of the course). I can pass the test with what I learn online. YouTube teaches everything!” Traditional schooling for known knowledge and known skills may soon be archaic. But schooling for the unknown will not.

Today and yesterday, we ask the wrong questions when we ask for facts. Facts are pedestrian in a fast-changing world. The Big Duh for educators is to ask children to use the facts they acquire to inquire into new possibilities and probabilities. Be curious and pursue your curiosity.

Curiosity will revise an Occam’s Razor that the next generation will use to answer important national and global questions. Where Occam said that “the simplest explanation is often the best explanation,” the revised Occam Rule will be “the best explanation will be one of possibilities that synergize into an informed probability.” Curiosity will lead us to possibility thinking, possibility evaluation, and synergy will lead to new knowledge and ways to use new knowledge. “Best” will be the most effective proposal and evaluation of possibilities not the simplicity of conclusions reached. The journey will be more valuable than the destination.

Why is this so?

Curiosity is an innate human characteristic. We are like kittens that cannot resist pushing a ball. The result of each push opens the possibility of where the next push will lead. I am not suggesting that a kitten conceives of results, kittens only see the opportunity. Human ingenuity and creativity are what we play with after we first push the ball and see where it has rolled and consider “why and what if.”

Humans respond to two types of curiosity – perceptual and epistemic. Perceptual is the need to resolve the dissonance in unexpected or contradictory things. The ball bounced back off the wall or, by starting a push with a pull, the ball rolls forward and then reverses backward. Curiosity looks to know “why this is so” and “what if I …” Perceptual curiosity is episodic and usually is connected to externality. We encounter contradictions, we resolve contradiction, we are satisfied with a new status quo.

Epistemic is internal and constant; it is our happiness motivator, and every human responds to it. A thirst to know or to do something that is new and novel, that intrinsic drive, is answered by a rush of dopamine. Curiosity that leads to dopamine happiness can lead to more curiosity to get more dopamine. For the epistemic curious there always is another hill to climb to see what is on the other side. Epistemic curiosity ignites our body to create dopamine and humans like a surge of dopamine.

Understanding the power of curiosity is a tremendous tool for teachers. We can create episodes of dissonance. We can suspend reality of real-world problem-solving simulations for students. We can use reverse engineering causing students explore “What would life in North America be like today if Britain had defeated the colonists in the 1770s?” Or “How would our world have responded if Neil Armstrong found life forms under the dust and gravel on the moon?” There is a universe of “what if” propositions that require students to use what they know to explore what they do not. The answers are not facts but examples of possibilities and the reasons they are possibilities.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. – Zora Neale Hurston

At the same time, teachers can excite dopamine generation with challenges that push children to achieve more than they considered physically, intellectually, artistically, and socio-emotionally possible. A truth about American education is that we do not push our students to their potentialities. We are hesitant about backlash. Consequently, too many students are bored with school. Children are kittens at heart and want to push the ball to see where it will go. Unlike kittens, we can challenge children to push more complex problems than where a ball will roll and mutually be excited with how each child responds to the challenge.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education that does not evoke curiosity is telling the same stories over again in a daycare center to children who daydream with their eyes and ears closed.

The Big Duh!

Curiosity does not kill cats; it makes a cat a cat. The curiosity of possibilities and probabilities is the next frontier in an educational world that has made facts mundane,

Remember that things are not always as they appear to be… Curiosity creates possibilities and opportunities. – Roy Bennett

Rousseau, Come Back

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“Education is an opportunity, and children should make the most of it. You can never have too much education.” Guilty as charged. As a principal, superintendent, and school board member, I overloaded children aged 5-18 with too many education requirements and compelling programs.  School was an open frame of time, and I led educators in prescribing as many things as we could for the education of children. We labeled our programs as curricular and extracurricular opportunities and were proud of the total education available to our children. Even after traditional academics, activities, arts, and athletics, we wrapped our arms around atypical school activities, like sailing, bowling, archery, trap shooting, biking and hiking, and electronic gaming and made then school sponsored. Schooling was the full Monty.

Seldom did we experience an existential moment, notably “what am I doing and why am I doing it”, the answer always was “this is good for kids.” Today I am no longer convinced of that answer. I would do it differently. Rousseau, come back!

Nature or nurture should be nature and nurture.

Adults have forever wrestled with the question of the best way for children to learn about the world. Do we let children explore and experience the world and from their natural learning prepare themselves for adult life? Is education the child’s responsibility? Is self-education a natural and adequate phenomenon? Or do we create, pre-plan, and program their education to ensure they learn what we want them to learn? Is education the adults’ responsibility? Does education require direct nurturing?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau helped us understand the value of allowing children to explore and learn naturally. In writing Emile (1762), he created an educational philosophy aligned with the physical and mental development of a child and their exposure to experiential learning. He said that children learn best through direct interaction with a natural environment that optimizes their curiosity and exploration. Learning should be hands-on and active. He was opposed to adults lecturing children, rote memorization of information, and mandatory school attendance. To Rousseau, experiencing life and its consequences taught children critical thinking, moral, and social lessons that were superior to didactic lessons in a school. Life is full of problem-solving needs and children develop skills to match and meet their needs.

Rousseau’s philosophies live in Montessori, Waldorf, and outdoor education programs. They are apparent in school curricula that uses problem-based, project-based, and inquiry-based education. And they are apparent in early child education’s play-based learning curricula.

Horace Mann provided the contrary view; the education of children is a public responsibility and should be regimented. Mann is labeled the “Father of American Public Education.” He espoused universal, free, compulsory education of all children. At a time when a lack of social and economic status barred children from education, Mann led the movement for common schools that would meld all children into a more unified and democratic society as adults. Mann’s schools were taught by professionally trained teachers and used a standardized curriculum focusing on reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and science. He embedded teaching of common morals, civic responsibility, and character development. Schools were funded by local taxes to ensure that all families could afford to enroll their children. Mann created our educational industry.

Regardless of political leanings today, most adults hold to these as the purpose of universal 4K-12 education.

  • Democracy requires educated citizens, and public education equips children with the basic knowledge necessary for informed decision-making, civic engagement, and understanding their communities.
  • Economic self-sufficiency requires foundational skills for personal and professional growth that contribute to the economy and self-support.
  • Public education instills shared values, tolerances, and cooperation necessary for diverse people to live in a stable and unified society.

Mann’s philosophies live in the WI statutory requirements for teacher preparation and subject area curricular requirements. A quick review of any public school’s vision and mission statements and district policies demonstrates Mann’s influence today.  

Why revisit Rousseau?

We have forgotten to balance the fundamental elements of nature and nurture for the best education of children. We are ambushed by these very misleading and disruptive arguments.

  • The education of children is a national priority that ensures the international dominance of the United States on economic, scientific, and political issues.
  • Through public education we shape the ideological thinking of the next generations. They must be taught the right ideology.
  • Because education is funded with public tax dollars, we demand that all children achieve our predetermined outcomes.
  • Public education is the primary daycare provider for children in the United States. The state has a responsibility for the total welfare of children while parents work.

Each of these is balderdash if we believe that the primary and fundamental purpose of education is to cause children to develop into wholesome, inquiring and thinking individuals who are prepared to participate and thrive in a democratic society. To achieve this purpose, we need to provide balance between nature and nurture.

Too much nature creates a Lord of the Flies scenario, and too much nurture creates a totalitarian scenario. As we bent toward too much dictum in the education of children in the last 30 years, we need to take our adult hands off the throttle and allow children opportunities to learn from their innate curiosities and wonderment.

In the argument of nature versus nurture, who speaks for children?

In my late career thinking, I observe that few adults speak for children. We speak from self-evident biases and for our self-serving needs. Almost all, if not all, critical decisions about the education of children are made by the political negotiations of adults. There are no children at the table or in the room.

In our post-pandemic data, it is clear that when children do not see themselves and their needs being met in their public education, they bail out. The major dilemma we face in this decade will not be the loss of academic achievement and the onset of socio-emotional problems in youth. The problem will be that as children matriculate into middle and secondary education, they lose faith in the efficacy of the education adults deliver to them. Our issues today are not lack of achievement but lack of engagement. We need to reassess the overwhelming manner in which we dictate schooling and life for children and reincorporate more of Rousseau. We need to rebalance the virtues of nature and nurture in the educational development of all children. If we do not, we will stand alone in classrooms that children have fled.