Whatever Happened to Curiosity?

by Chris Davis

The "Spark"

“It was my son’s first day of school. As he boarded the bus that day, I was as excited as he was. He was such a clever, creative, inquisitive child. I just knew he would thrive in school. Then, one day, several months later, I picked him up at the bus stop. As he exited the bus, I suddenly noticed something missing in his eyes. There was no enthusiasm, no spark. It scared me. I said in my heart, ‘Who did this to my little boy? Where did his life go?’”

This heart-wrenching scene (or one similar to it) has been experienced countless times since the advent of the public school movement. Maybe you have had a similar experience and that is why your little one doesn’t go to school anymore. However, did you know that we can keep our children home and do the same thing to them that has been done to millions of children for over 150 years? We can take the "spark" out of learning. The different ways we do this is the subject of another article, but for now, I want to discuss one part of this "spark," which is curiosity.

I once heard Raymond Moore discuss education and someone in the audience asked this question: "How do you know if your child is really learning?"

His answer, "Look at who is asking the most questions. If it's you, the child isn't learning. If it's the child, learning is going on."

I haven’t seen any statistics to back this up, but I agree with Dr. Moore that children learn a lot more when they come up with the question.

Children come into a world that is filled with wonderful, intriguing; and, yes, sometimes dangerous things. There is an awful lot they need to know. And, there is a whole subculture of trained professionals out there just waiting to get these kids into a room and tell them what they should want to know.

The trouble is, children are curious. God built this into them. They want to know all sorts of stuff. Most of it isn’t very important, really. Except to them. What do your children ask you? Their questions are wonderfully creative and, sometimes, annoying.

Whether our children are in school or we are “schooling” them at home, most of us believe that what children should learn has already been established. It is simply up to us to make sure all the information they are to learn actually get inside of them. But, are these the things our children want to know? If we were honest, we would have to admit the answer would probably be, “No.” Of course, we don’t ask our children what they are curious about, or what intrigues them, or what they would like to know. After all, who are they? Just kids.

What do your children WANT to learn about?

When my sons were younger, at the beginning of each school year, I would take an hour or two and read the Elijah Company Resource Guide out loud to them. That’s right, I would read the Elijah Company catalog, page after page, to the boys. In front of me was a piece of paper divided into three parts. As I read the catalog I encouraged the boys to stop me when something sounded interesting that they thought they might want to learn during the coming year. Then I would type out a list of what each boy indicated he was interested in learning. Of course, each child had way more on his list that could possibly be covered during a year, so I spent time with each one and whittled the list down to a manageable size.

“James,” I said during one of these sessions. “You have said you want to raise snakes this year.” As I had read through the science section of our catalog, I had come to the category on snakes and James had made me put “snakes” on his list. I didn’t mind James raising snakes if that is what he truly wanted to do. I just needed him to know, from my own experience as a boy his age, what raising snakes entailed.

After listening carefully to me, James said, “OK, Dad, maybe I’ll do snakes next year.” James actually never lost his curiosity for snakes because, although he never raised one, I allowed him to spend as much time as he wanted studying them. Of course, in order to do this with my children, I had to object to the worldview that what children should learn has already been established. Why? Because if we allow our children to do many of the things that interest them, a lot of time is used up that ordinarily would be spent teaching them the “officially” recognized information.

In their very important book, Discover Your Child’s Learning Style, authors Willis and Hodson make the following observations:

“When children enter the schoolroom in kindergarten or first grade, their abilities to conform and perform according to preset standards are what they are judged by.” And, “...conformity and performance measures are what count. Memorizing facts, taking tests, and receiving grades replace investigating, wondering, discovering, playing, and asking questions.” (page 25-26).

We assume children will learn what we want them to learn the way we want them to learn it. What is so very dangerous about this assumption is that, for many children, what we really want for our children is destroyed in the process: that each child develop a lifetime love of learning.

Pre-digested knowledge

I have written many articles, and spent many years speaking about the one-size-fits-all, graded, generic, in-the-box, prepackaged, scope & sequence curricula that is in use by homeschooling families. This type of curricula were originally produced when the public schooling movement began in the mid 1800's because these are the materials most useful to efficiently educate masses of children in a “factory” model of institutionalized government (or, for that matter, private or Christian) schooling.

In the beginning of the homeschooling movement, the type of curricula mentioned above was not available to homeschooling parents. The reason is that in the early years homeschooling parents weren’t at all interested in reproducing the public school model of what children did during the day. Since homeschooled children weren’t using the same materials as children who were “in school”, publishers didn’t have a market for what they were already printing. But, as the homeschooling movement drew families whose primary concern was their children’s education, publishers of public, private, and Christian school curricula found a new market for their curricula. Homeschooling parents began to try to produce the same kind of high school graduate as the public school, so they began using the same curricula.

In an institutional school setting, a child’s abilities to conform and perform to present standards are what he or she is judged by. I would like to suggest that, in the homeschool setting, what needs to be judged is the depth of curiosity found in our children.

Recently I read a study which concluded that 85% of all communication aimed at three year olds is either telling the child not to do something he is doing or how bad he is for having done what he just did. I was astonished. What are all these three year olds doing that they need such continual correction? I would suspect they are exploring and, in so doing, getting into things they shouldn’t be getting into.

Encouraging and Nourishing Curiosity

Take a piece of paper and draw a line from the left of the page to the right. At the extreme left side of the line, write “birth.” At the extreme right of the line, write “left home.” Somewhere along the line, put “age 12." Now, from birth to about age 12 your child’s learning should be as experiential as possible. This is the time for taking ordinary activities (ie. setting the table, building a birdhouse, looking through a microscope) and learning while doing. It is the time to buy lots of field guides and a good microscope. Put a terrarium on the kitchen table (or a counter top) and tell your kids, “Whatever you find outside and you don’t know what it is, bring it in and put it in the terrarium. We’ll get the field guide and look it up.” This is the time to raise pets, get to know the stars, and ask thousands of questions.

Thousands of questions? Yes. You should be asking question every few minutes. And, you don’t even have to know the answers. Just ask. “Why do you suppose grass is green and the sky is blue?” “Why aren’t there any blue flowers?” “Why do so many animals hide from us?” “What is electricity?” Why should you do this? Because children need to know that asking questions is not only an all right thing to do, it is the best way to be a life-long learner. If your children hear you asking questions all the time, guess what they will grow up doing? That’s right. And, if they grow up asking questions, they may not accept just anything and everything they are told. They might actually be immune to propaganda and advertising. They will think!

Men have believed many things for long periods of time that turned out to be untrue when someone decided to question their validity. But, first, someone had to ask. One of Einstein’s most famous quotes goes like this,

“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” Einstein spent his life questioning accepted scientific beliefs. He said, “Curiosity is more important than knowledge.”

And, we should be asking our children questions about Scripture. If Scripture is the most true of truths, our children’s faith will be strengthened the more questions we bring to the Bible.

I challenge parents, and I challenge myself, to engender a sense of curiosity in our children. One of the most important words you will ever hear your child say is, “Why?” The second most important word is, “WOW!” This word is full of expression, wonder and inquisitiveness.

Eventually, you will need to add academics to your child’s experiential learning. Don’t begin this too soon and never allow academics to overwhelm curiosity. One can almost see Einstein shaking his head as he wrote, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Make sure your education is never so formal that one day you notice something important missing in your child’s eyes.

Source: homeschoolmarketplace.com