Summary Practice — Odalys

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. 

In the passage “’Schools Are Killing Curiosity’: why we need to stop telling children to shut up and learn”, Wendy Berliner asserts how the structure of the school system has drawn out the curiosity of children and is basing their learning comprehension of tests. According to the writer, based on the latest American research it suggests “we should be encouraging questions, because curious children do better.” The author develops more on this example by stating that children who were most curious performed the best in an academic setting. Moreover, Berliner connects this to children from different economic classes, stating how poorer children have the strongest connection between curiosity and performance. This led to them being less curious and distracted by a thunderstorm because they were not shut down or disregarded when they asked about it. Furthermore, the author demonstrates how curious children are by asking an average of 107 questions an hour from the age of 14 months to 5 years based on a 2007 research logging questions. Berliner then developed on this example by saying the older children become, the less questions they ask because the school system has cultivated this idea that having curiosity is a risk to their results. The writer concludes that while there are still some teachers that encourage and enhance curiosity, teachers are not to blame because they have targets to meet. The foundation of the problem is the school system who expect children to shut up and learn.