Provoking Curiosity
I just read in the New York Times an article about how a baby learns, in general. The following was my favorite part:
In 2007, Laura Schulz and Elizabeth Baraff Bonawitz at M.I.T. demonstrated that when young children play, they are also exploring cause and effect. Preschoolers were introduced to a toy that had two levers and a duck and a puppet that popped up. One group was shown that when you pressed one lever, the duck appeared and when you pressed the other, the puppet popped up. The second group observed that when you pressed both levers at once, both objects popped up, but they never got a chance to see what the levers did separately, which left mysterious the causal relation between the levers and the pop-up objects. Then the experimenter gave the children the toys to play with. The children in the first group played with the toy much less than the children in the second group did. When the children already knew how the toy worked, they were less interested in exploring it. But the children in the second group spontaneously played with the toy, and just by playing around, they figured out how it worked.
One of the major problems in education today, either at home or at school, is that we love to be what teachers call the “sage on the stage” rather than the “guide on the side.” Meaning to say, we love to give out the answers. However, as this one paragraph states, kids learn more when they learn by discovery, not because you tell them. I’m sure we can all remember a time when we discovered something on our own and got praised for it. It is one of the best feelings! Who cares how many other people know it, why it’s useful, we enjoy the moment simply for learning’s sake!
This is what mathematics can and should be all about- the wow factor in discovery/ problem solving. So before I begin blogs about what elements are important, one of the best things you can do for you kid is to be excited with them of the “magic” of discovery. Any kind of discovery, from whats behind the blanket (your face! haha) to what’s behind x in a number puzzle!
If this really interests you, you really should read A Mathematician’s Lament. It’s a super easy read and very enlightening!
