‘Schools are killing curiosity’: why we need to stop
telling children to shut up and learn Teaching
Pupils who ask lots of questions get better results,
especially those from poorer homes
Wendy Berliner | Tue 28 Jan 2020 07.15 GMT
Young
children sit cross-legged on the mat as their teacher prepares to teach them
about the weather, equipped with pictures of clouds. Outside the classroom,
lightning forks across a dark sky and thunder rumbles. Curious children call
out and point, but the teacher draws their attention back – that is not how the
lesson target says they are going to learn about the weather.
It
could be a scene in almost any school. Children, full of questions about things
that interest them, are learning not to ask them at school. Against a background
of tests and targets, unscripted queries go mainly unanswered and learning
opportunities are lost.
Yet
the latest American research suggests we should be encouraging questions,
because curious children do 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 study is highlighted in a new book by Judith Judd and
me, How to Succeed at School. What Every Parent Should Know.
The
researchers gauged levels of curiosity when the children were babies, toddlers
and preschoolers, using parent visits and questionnaires. Reading, maths and
behaviour were then checked in kindergarten (the first year of school), where
they found that the most curious children performed best. In a finding critical
to tackling the stubborn achievement gap between poorer and richer children,
disadvantaged children had the strongest connection between curiosity and
performance.
Further,
the researchers found that when it came to good school performance, 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.
Teachers
who concentrate on developing focus and good behaviour because of the links to
good academic performance, now need to take on board that developing curiosity
could be even more important.
The
study’s lead researcher, Dr Prachi Shah, a developmental and behavioural
paediatrician at Mott and an assistant research scientist at the University of
Michigan, says: “Promoting curiosity in children, especially those from
environments of economic disadvantage, may be an important, under-recognised way
to address the achievement gap. Promoting curiosity is a foundation for early
learning that we should be emphasising more when we look at academic
achievement.”
Children
are born curious. The number of questions a toddler can ask can seem infinite –
it is one of the critical methods humans adopt to learn. In 2007, researchers
logging questions asked by children aged 14 months to five years found they
asked an average of 107 questions an hour. One child was asking three questions
a minute at his peak.
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. Even worse, as they got
older the children gave up asking altogether. There were two-hour stretches in
fifth grade (year 6) where 10 and 11-year-olds failed to ask their teacher a
single question.
In
one lesson she observed, a ninth grader raised her hand to ask if there were
any places in the world where no one made art. The teacher stopped her
mid-sentence with, “Zoe, no questions now, please; it’s time for learning.”
Engel,
who is professor of developmental psychology at Williams College in
Williamstown, Massachusetts, says: “When you visit schools in many parts of the
world it can be difficult to remember they are full of active, intellectual
children, because no one is talking about their inner mental lives. How well
they behave, and how they perform seem much more important to many people in
the educational communities. Often educational bureaucracies have shunted
curiosity to the side.”
When
teachers teach young children not to ask questions, it is not surprising that
high-performing students studied by American researchers in 2013 were found to
be less curious, because they saw curiosity as a risk to their results. The
questions they asked were aimed at improving their results, whereas the
questions asked by more curious students were aimed at understanding a topic
more deeply.
Of
course, some teachers do encourage and enhance curiosity – Engel says that in
every school she visits there tends to be one teacher who is managing it. But
it is usually down to an individual – rather than a systematic approach such as
that introduced at Ilminster Avenue nursery school, in Bristol.
Last
September the nursery took the radical step of permanently removing most of its
toys for two-year-olds and replacing them with a range of cardboard boxes, tin
cans, pots and pans, old phones, kettles, computers and plumbing supplies –
anything with creative possibilities.
The
children took to the new objects immediately, making slides for building blocks
with guttering, dens and spaceships with cardboard boxes and having
conversations with imaginary people on old phones. Old keys were used to lock
things away or unlock imaginary kingdoms. Most haven’t asked for the toys back.
Matt
Caldwell, the headteacher, says sceptical parents and teachers have been
convinced by the change because of the rise in creativity and conversation
among the children.
He
says: “What children love is to copy what adults are doing with objects. What
people and objects do makes them curious about their world.
“School
kills curiosity. When do children get to ask questions about things that
interest them? As soon as they are at primary school they have to shut up and
learn. It’s not the fault of teachers. They have so many targets to meet.”
Paul
Howard-Jones, professor of neuroscience and education at Bristol University,
who has visited to observe the children playing with their new “toys”, says
humans learn from novel situations and curiosity is important to that process.
“Children
should be prompted and encouraged to ask questions even though that can be
challenging for the teacher,” he says. “We do need to find some time for
questions during the day. There is not enough time in schools for creativity
and following up on curiosity.”
How
to Succeed at School: Separating Fact from Fiction. What Every Parent Should
Know, by Wendy Berliner and Judith Judd, is published by Routledge
Source :
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/28/schools-killing-curiosity-learn
