CHILDRENS EDUCATION

‘Schools are killing curiosity’: why we need to stop telling children to shut up and learn

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.

Ilminster Avenue nursery children. Researchers have found children aged 14 months to five years ask an average of 107 questions an hour. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

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

A child at Ilminster Avenue nursery. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

NYC Community Schools, focused on child poverty, succeed in key metrics, study finds

Still, the results offer a measure of good news in a field where failure is far more common.

“We did see a tremendous amount of promise for the program, particularly in the younger grades,” said William R. Johnson, a Rand Corp. researcher who studied it over three years. The Rand report was being published Tuesday.

The Community Schools program, operating in 267 New York schools, uses school campuses to offer a range of social services and family supports. Unlike other reform ideas, the program does not directly address teacher quality, curriculum or other core aspects of education.

Rather, it seeks to use the school as a community gathering place where children can get counseling, eyeglasses or dental care; where after-school programs help with homework and keep kids engaged; and where parents can get involved with schools, take a class or pick up extra groceries.

“When that child is hungry, it’s very hard to focus on academics,” said Luis Torres, principal for 15 years at Benjamin Franklin School, an elementary campus in the South Bronx that participates in the community school program. He said children cannot learn if they are worried about food, shelter, safety or health. “That’s the real power of the community school. You’re not just focusing on academics. You’re focusing on the overall well-being of the children.”

The program costs about $200 million a year and is funded with federal, state and city dollars. Much of the money goes to nonprofit partner organizations, which hire a community school director to work out of the school.

The program has been a priority for Mayor Bill de Blasio (D). He largely jettisoned the accountability education agenda of his predecessor, Mike Bloomberg, who focused on closing ­low-performing schools and replacing them with smaller schools with new employees. That approach angered teacher unions but led to an increase in high school graduation rates.

Critics argued that more funding was needed to help children with the most profound needs, and they found a champion in de Blasio.

Early in his tenure, de Blasio touted a new initiative called Renewal, which aimed to improve struggling schools by pouring resources into them and improving curriculum and teaching. The city spent $750 million on the program, but early results were disappointing, and the mayor terminated it last year. So the new study was particularly welcome news for him.

“The jury is in — community schools work,” de Blasio said in a statement. “Since Day One, we have been on a mission to no longer let zip code determine academic success, and community schools are one way we are delivering on that promise.”

Community schools have been around for decades, but there has been a dramatic expansion in recent years, as policymakers shift away from school accountability and toward the underlying challenges faced by children in poverty. In Los Angeles, a key agreement helping to end a teacher strike was the school district’s promise to transform 30 schools into community schools. Nationwide, there are more than 5,000 of these schools, Rand said.

Studies have generally found modestly positive effects. But the idea has never been tried — or evaluated — on the scale found in New York, where some 135,000 students attend a community school.

Over three years, Rand studied 113 New York schools and measured their results against similar schools not in the program. The report found several statistically significant improvements and no areas where things got worse.

In elementary and middle schools, the portion of students advancing to the next grade on time increased in the first two years, and the number of disciplinary incidents fell all three years. In high schools, the portion graduating increased in two of three years, and there was an increase in credits accumulated by students in all three years.

For all levels of school, the portion of children chronically absent fell in all three years studied.

The impact on test scores was minimal. There was no statistically significant increase in English Language Arts scores, and math scores improved only in year three.

The study offered surprisingly positive results, said Jeannie Oakes, a senior fellow at the nonprofit research group Learning Policy Institute, who co-authored a review of the research on community schools. She said the improvement in math scores in year three may be an early sign of academic growth.

“Math is usually the first to bump up because math, unlike language arts, is something the kids learn almost entirely at school,” she said.

But raising test scores may require more direct improvements to teaching, said James Kemple, executive director of the Research Alliance for New York City Schools at New York University. He said evidence from the study is encouraging enough to continue the program but said the city may need to be more realistic about what is needed to increase academic performance.

“The jury is still out,” he said.

Learning Community: ReadyRosie inspires Parent University families to engage, learn together

The Learning Community of Douglas and Sarpy Counties has its assignment – close the opportunity gap with powerful partnerships, proven programs and leading-edge tools.

Here are a couple of the most promising ways the Learning Community is investing in new technologies and more innovative practices to support children, families and teachers.

ReadyRosie | Active, accessible family engagement

They weren’t sure about it at first – this early childhood learning tool that promised to bring the smarts to their smartphones. For a group of Omaha families, initial skepticism has swiped over to genuine enthusiasm.

“Once our families were able to see it and use it, they really fell in love with it,” says Jamalia Parker, Family Engagement Services director for the Learning Community of Douglas and Sarpy Counties.

The Learning Community Center of North Omaha introduced ReadyRosie to families in its Parent University program at the beginning of the school year. The mobile learning platform boasts a library of more than 1,200 “Modeled Moment” videos on a wide range of topics – from literacy and math to social-emotional skills. The videos, most 2 minutes long, demonstrate fun, easy activities kids and caregivers can do to strengthen bonds and build on classroom learning.

The videos underscore a core Learning Community belief that parents are a child’s first, best teachers. Months into the local pilot program, which also includes family workshops, ReadyRosie is resonating.

“Our families have been highly-immersed. So much so that the ReadyRosie evaluators said that our site had the highest usage. They came in and did focus groups with us and our families. When they asked, ‘What do you all like about it?’ it was the accessibility,” Parker says.

Parent University families in Omaha can access ReadyRosie at any time on their smartphones, and the videos are available in English and Spanish. That has led Parent University’s Spanish-speaking families to use the library in two ways.

“Not only are they using it to teach their children, they’re using the app to develop their English-speaking skills as well,” Parker says.

As a person who is “big into data,” Parker hopes evaluation outcomes will show the program helps children progress to higher levels of learning. It has already influenced exciting possibilities in curriculum. In February, Parent University will launch its first online pilot course, another way of offering busy parents “something they can access on their time.”

“ReadyRosie engagement really inspired me to get that going in the new year,” Parker says.

Mindfulness | Present focus, future success

A focus on social-emotional learning is helping children achieve greater success. Mindfulness (focusing intently on the present moment) is a big part of that.

Learning Community support is connecting teachers to expert mindfulness training, and a growing number of programs, supported by the Learning Community, now include a mindfulness component.

Dr. Jolene Johnson, associate director of the Interdisciplinary Center of Program Evaluation at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, says teaching mindfulness, at home and at school, gives children a powerful skill needed for lifelong-learning.

“Once teachers and parents understand mindfulness, it’s something that’s easy to make part of your daily routines,” says Dr. Johnson, a Learning Community program evaluator.

Not to be lumped in with the latest, unproven trends, Dr. Johnson says data from brain science backs it up: practicing mindfulness can help children improve executive functioning, memory, and the ability to calm their bodies, manage their emotions and improve focus.

In the workplace, those who practice mindfulness have proven more likely to stay positive and focused on priorities, potentially increasing their workplace value.

Short, simple exercises, performed throughout the day, can help build mindfulness. (One example is having children focus on breathing in and breathing out for one minute.) Children and adults can potentially start seeing benefits in weeks.

To learn more about the effective and innovative ways the Learning Community is working to close the opportunity gap, visit https://learningcommunityds.org/.