Curiosity and Creativity in Children, Perhaps Not Quite as Sir Ken Robinson Suggests?

We preface today’s post with a brief interchange between Professor Steven Dutch and one of his students:

Student:

This course wasn’t relevant.

Professor Steven Dutch:

If something as vast as mathematics or science or history can pass through your brain without even scraping the sides on the way through, that’s a pretty big hole. Are you sure it’s the course that doesn’t relate to anything?

Educational Theory

As we move towards greater use of technology within education, there is a push away from the traditional, teacher-centered classroom to one that is student-centered. While offering some very interesting potential for teachers, one element that appears to be taken for granted as we seek to make a student-centered classroom work is the need for a motivated learner.

One of the most significant criticisms leveled against teacher-centered classrooms is that such an environment actually fosters a level of student passivity over time. The belief is that using more of a “guide on the side” or a discovery-learning approach featuring essential question formats would be far superior to our current practice of a set curricula driving classroom instruction.

That belief is founded in great part on the notion that curiosity is an innate characteristic in children. Therefore, in teacher preparation programs, the focus should be on developing a teaching arsenal that unleashes this fundamental human trait.

Such a belief has lead to a discussion that we should replace traditional pedagogical or “child-leading” teaching strategies with andragogical or “man-leading” approaches. The shift is seen as moving away from “taught” education to learning that is self-directed.

But as we noted earlier, such a shift is dependent upon a certain level of motivation from the learner as well as the notion that curiosity is innate.

Sir Ken Robinson

In June of 2006, Ted.com posted a presentation from Sir Ken Robinson. That video soon made its way around the internet, especially within the educational community.

Robinson insists that we do not get the best out of people because we educate our children to become good workers instead of creative thinkers. According to Robinson, students come with restless minds and bodies. But instead of cultivating this energy and a child’s natural curiosity, Robinson insists that schools either ignore or even stigmatize children.

“We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says.

As others have suggested, Robinson sees curiosity as an innate trait. He also postures that creativity is similarly embedded within us. These thoughts or beliefs are gradually seeping into our educational culture and are forming the basis for a strong shift in teaching practices.

An Invalid Assumption?

In his article, “Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?,” Professor Steven Dutch takes very strong exception to the assumption that curiosity is innate.

Dutch calls the idea that “humans are intrinsically curious, with an inborn love of learning” the Standard Model. He includes in that standard model the fundamental notion espoused by many that “children are insatiably curious about their world, but by the time they are adults, a stifling educational system has beaten it out of them.”

To say Dutch disagrees with this position would be a simple understatement. Dutch begins by offering some questions of the rhetorical kind.

If we humans were in fact innately curious, “Why should it be possible to stifle these qualities at all?” asks Dutch. “Assuming that there are people with a vested interest in stifling curiosity and creativity, why should they be able to prevail over those members of society who value curiosity and creativity?

“If curiosity and creativity are general traits of human beings, anti-intellectualism should be a rare and aberrant phenomenon,” offers Dutch. “It should be regarded as a variety of mental retardation, or a condition as undesirable as impotence.”

Instead, Dutch offers a different rationale. Instead, “curiosity and creativity collide headlong with another trait deeply rooted in biology, the desire to minimize effort and expenditure of energy.”

Dutch believes that curiosity and creativity most likely evolve as offshoots of play. In comparing human actions to that of animals, Dutch notes that “even in species whose young are noted for playfulness and inquisitiveness, adults do not exhibit the same level or kind of play.”

The reason:

“They don’t need to – they have already learned their environment, and play both takes energy and may distract them from necessary vigilance.”

Therefore, far from being beaten out of the young, we “should probably expect curiosity to decline as humans get older, just in the natural order of things. It’s ridiculous to expect adults to grow physically at the same rate as babies, and probably as silly to expect them to grow intellectually at the same rate.”

Dutch goes on to examine a magazine article subtitled, “Should Learning Be Its Own Reward?”

Turning the question a tad, Dutch asks: “Why isn’t learning a sufficient reward? You don’t have to offer people incentives to have sex, or eat strawberry shortcake, or go to Disneyland. For most people those activities are their own reward. Why isn’t learning in the same class?”

Within his article, Dutch offers numerous examples that contradict the notion that humans are fundamentally creative and curious. To which Dutch goes on to formulate his conclusion, “that there is something fundamentally wrong with” the standard model of human nature.

Curiosity and Creativity, Acquired Tastes

Dutch insists that curiosity and creativity are acquired adult tastes.

“Some people naturally enjoy running, and some people naturally enjoy creating,” writes Dutch, “but it is probably equally futile to expect either to become widely popular among the general population. Couch potatoes may enjoy an occasional bout of physical activity and normally incurious people may enjoy an occasional challenge, but neither can be cited as evidence that humans in general have an innate love of physical or mental activity.”

And as for children and innate creativity, Dutch insists we must “distinguish between tinkering and creativity.” He explains:

“Tinkering consists of exploring relatively minor variations on known themes, or subjecting new stimuli to an array of already known techniques. Babies tinker constantly. They put every new object in their mouth. Eventually they figure out that most things are not good to eat.”

This isn’t real curiosity according to Dutch. Instead, serious curiosity “consists of actively seeking new kinds of stimuli.” And as for creativity, well children are not exactly “juxtaposing objects and ideas in new ways, and having a sound intuition for separating the significant result from the trivial.”

In his eyes children are not innately curious. Instead, they are tinkerers with generally short attention spans.

As an example he turns to Mozart who actually began composing music at age three. Dutch notes that “none of his juvenile pieces are played today except as musical curiosities” as they are nothing more than variations based on existing musical patterns.

“As a child, he was a tinkerer,” writes Dutch. “A very bright one, to be sure – he was Mozart after all – but still only a tinkerer. His adult creativity vastly exceeded his creativity as a child, and even as an adult, his last few years vastly outshone his earlier period. We also should note that his childhood achievements were hyped, and in some cases assisted, by his father.”

And almost as if he were setting out to respond directly to Sir Ken Robinson, Dutch adds:

“I’ve heard people claim they have never seen a child who wasn’t curious and couldn’t be motivated to learn.” But the problem is that “they fail to distinguish between tinkering and real curiosity and creativity. All children are tinkerers; it does not follow that all can or will develop curiosity and creativity in any profound sense.”

Ultimately, Dutch insists, “the curiosity and creativity of children is very superficial.”

And as for we humans being innately curious, “it is mostly a low order curiosity concerned with immediate gratification of a particular desire to know, and mostly oriented toward immediate practical results. There is no persuasive evidence that any societies have ever had a high proportion of people who were deeply curious in a systematic, disciplined way.”

Resisting Innovation

As but another specific point in the matter, Dutch notes the propensity for individuals and entire societies to resist innovation. If we were in fact, innately curious and creative, innovation should not only be welcomed, it should be our fundamental norm.

Such is simply not the case. Instead, historically we have craved certainty and operated, all too often from the perspective, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

As a total human species, we have not demonstrated the propensity to be either curious or creative. Such behaviors appear to exist more in isolation, very much in line with Dutch’s assertion, “some people enjoy running and some enjoy creating.”

While Sir Ken Robinson’s video offers great food for thought, it just might not be as on target as first suggested. It seems terribly cynical to say, but perhaps, as Dutch notes, the assertion that our institutions are “directed toward making us conform and stifling inquisitiveness and creativity” may be nothing more than our convenient excuse for the fact that so many “bright, inquisitive children” grow up to be nothing more than “shallow and jaded adults.”