Curious thoughts

I have had it up to my ears with folks reminding me about the natural curiosity of children, as though teachers spend their idle hours dreaming of ways to squelch it.

Unless the definition of curiosity has evolved (which is quite possible in an ed world that confounds "tolerance" and "love"), pretty much anything furry with nipples has natural curiosity, and as good as I am, I'm not going to be able to teach a marmoset much.

Curiosity is what made Jerry Springer a superstar. Every time we reduce science to something that flashes, fizzes, or booms in a classroom, we've Springerized science.

Science  defies hashing patterns we think we know. That's why it works. It kicks our ass over and over again each and every time we think we know everything about the natural world.

Children are also naturally religious superstitious. They see patterns where none logically naturally exist. 

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If you want a child to care about the natural world more than, say, angels, witches, and aliens (all interesting in their own right), you're going to need to introduce her to what's real.

Toss out the television, ditch the iPad, chuck the earbuds, and, most important, stop feeding her fear. Big Macs kill a lot more people than mud pies ever did.

It's not lack of curiosity that kills interest in the natural world, it's lack of exposure.

Heck, even toss out the books if your child has never turned over a rock to see what lies underneath.