Curiosity. It’s highly underrated. It’s not valued anylonger. It’s become an afterthought. It’s defined as a “strong desire to learn.” In a portion of Steve Jobs biography, I was reminded how important, and overlooked, curiosity really is….
Even before Jobs started elementary school, his mother had taught him how to read. This however, led to some problems once he got to school. “I was kind of bored for the first few years, so I occupied myself by getting into trouble.” It also soon became clear that Jobs, by both nature and nurture, was not disposed to accept authority. “I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.” ~excerpt from Steve Jobs, a biography by Walter Isaacson.
Did you read that part? “They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me.” Yes, that’s the part worth repeating. Here you have Steve Jobs, yes, the one who revolutionized modern technology, commenting on what school was like for him as a child. I can imagine there will likely be a few responses.
1.) Yeah, but not everyone is Steve Jobs.
2.) Well, he must have went to a bad school.
3.) He was successful anyway, right?
Okay. Sure, not everyone is Steve Jobs. But, how many brilliant kids sit in our classrooms buried under boring, mundane curriculum. Did he go to a bad school? Nah. He went to a common, everyday school. His situation? Totally typical of our education system. He made it, yes. He was successful, in spite of what he had to endure as a student. How many like him don’t make it? How many just give in and stop thinking? He made it, in spite of feeling like the curiosity was being beat out of him.
Your classroom can have pencils. It can have bulletin boards. It can have crayons. But the one thing it BETTER have is a chance for kids to be curious. Curiosity is what drives human learning. It’s not driven by gold stars, forcing memorization, or even a score report. Learning is driven by curiosity. It’s time to shift from a “culture of testing” to a “culture of curiosity.”
Unless, of course, we’re okay with “beating any curiosity out of” geniuses like Steve Jobs.
