Seth Godin asks more questions. He shares my passion for moving beyond the industrial organization of education into something more useful for the students—and also more inclusive of some who are ignored by the system that rewards memorizing and sitting quietly.
My grandkids go to a highly rated high school in the Chicago suburbs. My granddaughter showed creativity in projects (especially she and her brother during Covid) around middle school age. As a sophomore, I suggested she take the offered creative writing class for a semester. Turns out the teacher was terrible. They turned out no worthwhile work.
Most kids fail to be enthralled by science due to adherence to some far-off developed curriculum. When science is all about curiosity and discovery. And math and English should both be about learning to think. (One does not think to write, rather we write to think.)
Let’s get rid of science class in school.
Instead, beginning in kindergarten, we could devote a class to curiosity and explanation.
A class that persistently and consistently teaches kids to ask why and to answer how.
The unacceptable single-word answers are “because” and “magic.”
Curiosity is a skill, and it can be taught.
