What stops us from being curious?
The Curiosity Mindset series: Part 4
“How do I continue to nurture curiosity in my kids as they grow up?”
This is a question several parents have asked me over the past few months as I’ve deepened my research into the education system. And it’s a good question that’s not without basis; some of you may already be familiar with some of the teachings of Sir Ken Robinson, in particular one where he shared findings on a longitudinal study to measure the creativity levels of 1,600 children, starting at age 3-5, at age 8-10, at age 13-15, and then compared it to adults.
The findings:
3-5: 98% were considered creative geniuses
8-10: 32%
13-15: 10%
Adults: 2%
Sidebar 1: The research commenced in 1968 by Dr George Land, Beth Jarman, Calvin Taylor, et al, and was presented in Land and Jarman’s book Breakpoint and Beyond but annoyingly, the book did not share the raw data from their research, which prompted me down several rabbit holes but unfortunately I couldn’t find anything. Hit me up if you have access to research databases I don’t!
Sidebar 2: Yes I know that research focuses on creativity (or more specifically, divergent thinking) and not curiosity but I make an argument for how I reconcile that here.
I’ve also received variations of the ‘nurturing curiosity’ question when I speak to business owners and executives too, though typically it presents more as: “How do I continue to encourage creativity / lateral thinking / innovation in my teams?”
However, instead of busting out my amazing Curiosity Mindset (TM) methodology and jamming that down their throats, it raised a different question that I’ve been mulling over: “What stops us from being curious?”
This is a question that I’ve been trotting out to a broad spectrum of people (teachers, parents, business owners, etc) over the past few months and in this article, I’d like to compile what I’ve gathered.
Technology
Ok, a better framing of this is what technology (specifically smartphones, the internet, and now AI) has enabled, which is access to easy answers. Right now, you can ask AI any question you want and it will provide an answer on the spot. Great in principle, troublesome in practice.
The problem with easy answers is that it can sometimes be very surface level; a shallow ‘good enough’ response. The problem as I’ve argued here is that once our question is answered, our curiosity is essentially sated. It takes a great deal more effort to dig deeper.
Take my Sidebar 1 above and let’s imagine that I asked the question: “Are kids becoming less curious?” Pump that into Google and the AI immediately provides a response that appears to back the intention behind my question.
On the surface, this seems to answer my question but a quick glance on the right and we can see that the references provided are from The Guardian, LinkedIn, and the personal website of an academic.
It took me 2 more hours to deep dive through research databases and online libraries to figure out whether it was true, but how many students (or even adults for that matter) would be prepared to do that?
Shining the spotlight on you: How many times have you looked something up, only to stop once you’ve seen a few headlines from the search results? Why didn’t you go further?
You could argue that it’s because you didn’t have time or didn’t want to commit the extra effort for more research, but my argument is that your curiosity was sufficiently sated by a surface level answer (which, to be clear, might still be correct). Contrast this with the pre-technology era, where to find an answer, we might need to go to a library, read several books or articles (and properly read, not just scan), through which we might inadvertently learn new things all of which adds fuel to our curiosity.
Now, this example involves the effort of Googling something. In talking to my teacher friends, there is now also the refrain from students: “I saw something about this on TikTok.” To interpret this through a Curiosity Mindset framing, it becomes: “I have a surface-level answer to this question that’s been posed to me, provided haphazardly through the medium of TikTok.”
Barrier: Technology facilitates easy access to a sea of ‘good enough answers’, which can inhibit curiosity.
Suggestion: Encourage students to do their research in the library. Yes, it’s slower, more cumbersome, and takes more time, but the process of this can help nurture curiosity. If we can’t remove technology from the mix, then it would be to prompt students with the follow up question: “How do you know if your answer’s right?”
Lack of relevance
When you scroll through your newsfeed, why do you stop and read some articles but not others?
A natural response might be: “It caught my attention and it’s something I was interested in.” My reframing of that is: It was relevant to you, whether for:
Your scope of interest, whether professionally or personally, and / or
Your capacity for complexity (i.e. is it at your level of comprehension).
To give an example of the first factor (scope of interest), I really love astronomy and cosmology. If scientists have discovered something new in our great universe, I will for sure click on that article. In contrast, I am unlikely to click on the latest gossip from Married At First Sight as it’s something I just don’t care about (no slur on those who love MAFS; you do you).
When it comes to students, this is a bit of a no-brainer. As any teacher would tell you, students are pretty self-absorbed; if it’s not about them, it’s just going to be harder to engage them. I’m not trying to be critical here; I’ve been a student too. I almost failed English because I just could not engage with Shakespeare and Greek tragedies. It took an entirely different medium (an anime of all things, called Evangelion) to kick start my interest in literary analysis.
To give an example of the second factor (capacity for complexity), if I stumbled across an article on astronomy that was too simple or too difficult (i.e. filled with jargon), then I wouldn’t read further.
This is similar to what I’ve also heard from teachers, in that when students don’t engage with a task, it’s usually one of 3 things:
The task was too easy
They don’t understand the task
There are learning difficulties inherent within specific students
I’ll address the 3rd bullet point later but the first two reinforces my argument. The task being too easy can be explained insofar as if we already know the answers to something, then we’re naturally going to be less curious about it.
In terms of not understanding the task, I think there are a few additional layers here:
The concepts introduced are too foreign. How could I be curious about Shakespeare and classic literature when I had never encountered it before and couldn’t relate it to anything I had ever read? And I read a lot as a kid.
The instructions and ways of thinking are too obscure. I was never introduced to the process of analysing literary texts, so I didn’t even know how to think when it came to assessing something like Medea.
Not understanding the language or vocabulary. This goes much deeper than definitions; it’s about interpretation. If I use the word ‘analyse’ in context of literature, a young person might interpret ‘analyse’ as a surface level regurgitation of the text, whereas an adult might interpret ‘analyse’ to mean going deeper, to weigh pros and cons, to identify synergies or inconsistencies.
And that’s assuming we’re all native English speakers! Spare a thought for students for whom English is a second language; they may have completely different conceptions of the word, influenced by their cultural and linguistic upbringing.
Re-framing this back through the lens of relevance, my argument is that these layers ultimately mean that students don’t understand how a task is relevant to them, which then inhibit their curiosity.
Barrier: Our curiosity is inhibited when new information is not relevant to our interests, and / or presented in a way that’s too complex for us to understand (or it’s too easy and we know the answers already).
Suggestion: This is a hard one, because every student has different interests and possess different levels of capacity for complexity. But in short, to continue to nurture curiosity, we should try to understand how both elements show up in students, and then try to present information in a way that speaks to both. By presenting information in a way that’s relevant to students can continue to nurture their curiosity. This may be difficult for teachers in front of rowdy classrooms, so it may be a job for parents and / or tutors.
Sidebar 3: On challenges with learning difficulties, this is an area I’m not fully equipped to talk about. I’ve not studied it sufficiently that I’m comfortable with making any strong arguments, though my initial hypothesis would likely still be one of: “How is this relevant to the student?”
Environment
The final category that I’ll share for now is environment, both physical, psychological, and socio-cultural. In short, the environmental ‘soup’ that we’re all steeped in can have a strong impact on our curiosity.
Physical
I’ll start with the easiest one. Given most of you are likely working professionals, if all you do is work from home or work in an office cubicle, at some point your curiosity will likely just drop. Your surroundings become familiar (if not invisible), things get taken for granted, and you’re ‘in a routine’. Conversely, when we travel to new environments, it can change our mindset (such as the ones set up by my friend
over at ).From a student’s perspective, the same can apply, especially if the vast majority of schooling occurs within the same physical classroom. However, I’m not suggesting that it would be in the students’ interest to constantly change their space; there’s value in stability (as I’m sure any student who’s moved to a new school can attest to). But the physical environment does have an impact, which is perhaps why schools such as Montesorri and Steiner often have an emphasis on creating dynamic physical environments.
Psychological
What I’m referring to here are pressures of the mind. When I ask my professional peers what stops them from being curious, a common theme is stress, pressure, tight timelines, fear, etc, which logically makes a lot of sense. When we’re under too much pressure, we dispense with curiosity so we can just ‘get things done’.
I would argue that pressure doesn’t completely inhibit curiosity, and in some cases, it might even foster it; the operative word here is too much pressure (see my article on Reactive vs Conscious Curiosity for the pros and cons of both).
So from a student’s perspective, how might that play out? Well, imagine a student who’s coming from a high stress, disruptive home environment. Or if they’re being bullied at school. Or if the workload is too high respective to their capabilities. Some students might thrive, whilst others shut down.
Socio-cultural
The final environment here is a macro one that is perhaps the most influential but is perhaps the hardest to see.
What I’m referring to is the entire socio-cultural background that’s moulded an individual. For example, cultures that are hierarchical in nature, cultures that reward people for not speaking up, or even households in which education is not held in high regard.
Coming from a Chinese background, I know that there’s a tremendous academic pressure to just ‘get good grades’.
This isn’t strictly a cultural factor; in a country as populated as China, good grades are one of the only ways that really can mean the difference between meaningful job opportunities or bust (and even that’s not enough these days).
Naturally, ‘not all Asians’, but there’s a reason why so many Asian students resonate with the meme. Whilst we might not feel that pressure in a Western school, the pressure we feel at home might inhibit curiosity.
Barrier: Physical, psychological, and socio-cultural factors in our environment can all play a role in limiting our curiosity.
Suggestion: The easiest one to address is the physical environment: What can you do to create or introduce dynamic environments that continue to spark curiosity in students? I sympathise with teachers, in that changes in environment may invite new opportunities for distractions, thus finding balance here becomes key.
Psychologically, this gets harder as it comes down to the individual’s capacity to handle pressure. Too little and we fall into the ‘too easy’ trap. Too much and we risk shutting it down altogether. Again, I would also look to parents to assist in gauging the level of pressure to be applied.
Socio-cultural factors are the hardest to address as they often speak to the worldviews of people. Speaking purely from a Chinese background, it might be that being in a Western school may actually be the only outlet where curiosity is encouraged (in contrast to a high-pressure home environment where tutors are lining out the door). In these cases, it may become incumbent on the school to create spaces where a practice of curiosity can emerge.
In closing
To tie everything up in a neat bow for now, what stops us from being curious:
The all-pervasive technology that provides easy access to surface-level answers.
Whether information is presented in a way that’s relevant to both our context and our capacity for complexity.
Our physical, psychological, and socio-cultural environments.
Thus to continue to nurture curiosity:
Encourage a form of ‘slow learning’ that’s separated from technology. If that’s not possible, then encourage students to go deeper.
If students aren’t engaged, take a walk in their shoes. Consider if the information is presented in a way that’s interesting and relevant to them.
Three points:
Consider ways to create ‘dynamic-enough’ physical environments.
Be mindful of individual receptiveness to pressure and fine-tune as required.
Be mindful of socio-cultural dynamics; there might be more factors beneath the surface that inhibit curiosity.
A final question for you: What else do you think stops you from being curious?
As always, if you found this article valuable, a like and a share would go a long way (literally, it’s what the algorithms do).
This is the fourth in The Curiosity Mindset series, a multi-part series of articles going deep on curiosity, the research, the philosophy, and practical tools and methodologies. To view the other chapters in this series:
I love your point about technology providing "good enough" answers.
I've caught myself doing exactly what you described - scanning headlines and accepting surface-level answers because they satisfy that initial curiosity itch. It's like we've traded depth for convenience, and perhaps we're not even aware of what we're losing in that transaction.
I'm curious about your thoughts on another potential barrier: the fear of being wrong. In my experience, many people shut down their curiosity because they're afraid of asking "silly questions" or revealing what they don't know. In fact, when I speak to newbies on LinkedIn, most are afraid to engage for this very reason.
It's always a good read, Scott. Thank you!
This article is like the cliff notes for the book "Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It" by Ian Leslie, and I'm ok with that because it was one of the best books I've ever read. I was so intrigued and moved by this book that I wrote my English final, an argument piece on why my classmates should read it, last semester. Leslie explained why curiosity was so important, and talked about how to cherish it as a uniquely human quality. He cited many studies from childhood and adulthood. Leslie also spoke of what entertaining lifelong curiosity does to your health (spoiler alert: lifelong learning has many, many benefits) and he mentioned a lot of the same things you did. Thank you for the read and the reminder that we all need to stay curious!