Summary Practice – Jonathan

Berliner, Wendy. “’Schools Are Killing Curiosity’: Why We Need to Stop Telling Children to Shut up and Learn.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 28 Jan. 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/28/schools-killing-curiosity-learn.

“‘Schools are killing curiosity’ : why we need to stop telling children to shut up and learn” by Wendy Berliner is an article about how kids are discouraged from exploring there curiosity because of school. An example of this is when Berliner talks about a class learning about the weather and they focus there attention to the weather outside while asking questions. However the weather outside wasn’t on the lesson plan so the teacher directed the focus back to the class. Berliner even stated later that as kids got older they stopped asking questions altogether. Although kids from 14 months -5 years of age averaged 107 questions an hour fifth graders only had 2-5 questions in 2 hours. According to Berliner there was a nursery that decided instead of using toys they would give the kids random household items like pots and pans. The children immediately started to use their imagination to create forts and have fake conversations on fake phones. With all this Berliner concludes that schools should make more time for creativity and to follow up on kids curiosity.