Why Is School So…

 Boring, stressful, useless, depressing, and long. These are the top 5 auto-fill suggestions. Students all over the world are asking why school is so unengaging – and they want answers!

Learning is essential to life. Have you ever wondered why humans are one of the only animals born without the ability to walk? It’s because our heads are too big! If we developed in the womb to a stage where we could already walk and communicate from day one, we wouldn’t fit through the birth canal. Instead we have evolved to be born before we develop these essential skills with our DNA coding for an innate ability to learn.

Kids are hard wired to absorb knowledge and skills from their surroundings. They pick up language simply by observing others, and they are totally unphased by asking whatever is on their mind – “Why is water wet?”, Where do thoughts come from?”, “Why don’t crabs have eyebrows?” – do get in touch if you know the answers.

Professor George Land was hired by NASA to create an assessment that tests the creative potential of rocket scientists. They are searching for divergent thinkers who can approach problems from many different angles, and do not give up when one path brings them to a dead end. Needless to say you have to be in the very top percentile to make it to the next stage of recruitment. As the test is not knowledge specific, Professor Land decided to give it to 5 year olds to see how they scored. 98% of 5 year olds scored Genius Level creativity, the same children 5 years later only 30% reached the same level, another 5 years and we have dropped to 12%. When given to adults, only about 2% reach the ranks of genius creativity. Somewhere along the line we’ve taught our kids out of problem solving and looking at the world creatively, the core skill that encouraged us all to develop from helpless babies to independent young adults.

“You go talk to kindergartners or first-grade kids, you find a class full of science enthusiasts. They ask deep questions. They ask, ‘What is a dream, why do we have toes, why is the moon round, what is the birthday of the world, why is grass green?’

These are profound, important questions. They just bubble right out of them.⁠

You go talk to 12th graders and there’s none of that. They’ve become incurious. Something terrible has happened between kindergarten and 12th grade.” Carl Sagan