‘ Why do people get sick ?’ ‘ Why can ’ t dads have babies ?’ ‘ Why do I have to go to bed now ?’
Young children are naturally curious about the world and are continually seeking to make sense of all that they experience . They are not afraid to ask any question that comes into their minds , even if we might feel their questions are inappropriate , mundane or possibly even embarrassing . I am sure that for most parents there were many times when they wished the word ‘ why ’ had never been invented !
I like to think that we should rejoice that children are so curious about their world , and that we should strive to nurture their incredible curiosity and creativity . As adults , it is so easy for us to provide quick answers to their questions , in the belief that we are helping them to understand their world a little better – and possibly for expediency and our own sanity at times . However , by doing so we are also taking away an opportunity for their natural curiosity to be developed even more .
I often recall a quote I heard in the early days of my teaching career that reminds me of the need to nurture children ’ s curiosity : ‘ When we give a child an answer to a question we are robbing them of an opportunity to discover it for themselves .’ Now , that doesn ’ t mean that there aren ’ t times when it is entirely appropriate to answer a child ’ s question , more that we need to be discerning as to when we choose to do so , and how we might otherwise respond . Rather than just giving them the answer , we could choose to respond with our own question , ‘ Gee , that is a good question . I ’ m not sure . What do you think ?’
You see , not only are young children really good at asking questions , they are also very good at answering them for themselves . They may not have the ‘ correct answer ’, but they will usually have a theory or an idea about it . This is what we must strive to nurture and cultivate ; that ability to theorise and wonder that children seem to innately have .
Sadly , our practices and systems have a tendency actually to do the opposite to nurturing children ’ s curiosity and their ability to theorise . Every time we answer a question or correct one of their ideas , we are actually teaching them that their ideas are likely to be wrong and that adults have all the ‘ right ’ answers . This serves to impress on young children that it is best to wait until the adults tell you what you need to know , memorise it and be able to repeat it back to them . It can also serve to stifle their enthusiasm to have their own ideas and original thoughts .
Children seem to lose their propensity to solve problems and questions through original thought , and gradually take a ‘ learned approach ’ to making sense of the world . That is , they start to accept that there is a ‘ right way ’ to learn and that there are ‘ right answers ’ to questions . Many of the systems in place in our society tend to impact negatively on the originality of young children by bending their thinking to fit conventional methodologies ; teaching them that there is a ‘ correct ’ way to do things .
As an educator and a parent I know that I have also been a part of this process , and that I have been guilty of inadvertently impacting on children ’ s inquisitive nature , their natural curiosity , their free thinking and their originality . It is not an intentional effort by us – we are all a product of our own experiences and education – but we do contribute to it .
As a civilisation we have solved all of the easy problems of the world and we like to think how clever we are . However , we haven ’ t solved the big questions that still remain for us ; problems such as pollution , equity , disease , conflict , over-population , over-use of resources , sustainable energy , etc . Original thinking will be required to find new and original solutions to these issues , as conventional thinking doesn ’ t seem to have been able to do so .
Now , more than ever before , we need to nurture and cultivate the originality of thought of young people , the natural curiosity they seem to have in abundance , and allow them to be free from the fear of being continually corrected , that can so easily squash their confidence and ability to come up with creative solutions to problems .
We need to nurture the original thinking and abundant problem-solving abilities that our young people seem to have . They are the generation who we hope will solve the big problems of our world , and it will require them to look at such problems through a fresh set of lenses that have not been forced to work within the constraints of current conventional thinking and practices .
Maybe we , as adults , need to be directing more of our energies into asking our children ‘ why ’ questions more than we spend on giving them our answers .
YEAR 5 BOYS ( CHARLIE LEWIN , MASSIMO ZANDONA AND FERGUS CAMERON ) IN SCIENCE CLASS LEARNING HOW TO OPERATE POWERED MICROSCOPES , WHILE CAPTURING PHOTOS USING AN IPAD .
www . scotch . vic . edu . au Great Scot 9