February 5, 2021
#1 Curiosity
Hello Curious People,
This is Zach. For my first newsletter I want to talk about the importance of curiosity. Let’s dive in.
Curiosity I believe is the great driver of human beings. From an evolutionary perspective and looking back to our early hunter/gatherer days, curiosity is what ensured our survival as a species. Curiosity is what would have saved us when we heard a small rustle in the bush and noticed a slight movement.
We’d question, ”What was that?”
Curiosity would make us pay attention and realize that there was a predator soon enough so that we were prepared to flee or fight.
Curiosity did more than help us survive though. Curiosity helped us thrive! Curiosity made us pay attention to plants and figure out which ones we could cultivate and so we left our hunter/gather days and became farmers. Curiosity lead us from inventing the wheel to the rocket ship. Would we ever have gone to the moon if we were not curious about what it was like up there? I doubt it. Without curiosity we would either still be hunter/gatherers or perhaps even extinct.
To be curious is to be human. We are all born curious, and children are naturally the most curious. Their curiosity is evolutionary necessary for their development so that they learn about how the world works. Children are full of questions. At some point though, a lot of people stop asking questions, and they stop being curious.
Why is that?
The regular day to day life of our modern world does not need us to be so curious to survive. We don’t have predators. Most of us don’t even need to hunt or grow our own food. Water is brought to us from a readily available tap. Life is easy. But just because life is easy shouldn’t stop us from being curious though. We still need curiosity to thrive! So why else are people becoming less curious?
I believe the culprit is our education system. School kills curiosity.
Children full of natural curiosity end up spending 13 years (including Kindergarten) in a system that dulls their sense of wonder of the world and by the end of all their schooling their curious spirits are dead. How does that happen?
Well maybe it’s because the #1 lesson that we teach children in school is that their curiosity doesn’t matter. What matters is that they learn every piece of information that the teacher (or the school curriculum designers) decides is important. You read the books you’re told to read, and only read the chapters that you’re told to read. If you read ahead because you find it interesting, you’re told that’s bad (true story ask my brother). Curiosity isn’t important. The curriculum is important. And after 13 years of following the curriculum, people no longer follow their curiosity. They only follow instructions from authority.
As the thirty year award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto wrote in his book Dumbing Us Down, “Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.”
By grade 12 if you have any curiosity left, you’re probably considered a weirdo. That was me. I was the weirdo in grade 12 who spent my spare block in the library reading the entire encyclopedia series about the history of the world and watching documentaries about science on the school computers instead of going to 7 Eleven to get a slurpee or just going home to play games.
Not everyone finishes school having their curiosity completely killed, but I believe it happens to a vast majority of people. You are most likely one of those lucky people who never lost your curiosity (I say this because I presume curiosity is what made you sign up for this newsletter). Perhaps it’s because you had good parents (or someone else in your life) who encouraged you to be curious. Or you homeschooled (like I did just for a couple years). Or maybe for some other reason you are one of the lucky ones.
You’re lucky because curiosity is important. When you are curious there is no limit to what you can learn. Because the more you truly learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. The more you learn, the more you realize how much more you still have to learn (A future email will be about the “Circle of Understanding”). And so you keep learning.
And the more you learn, the more you learn that everything is connected. The world is not like school where everything is separated. In the real world, everything is connected. Science and art is connected. Gym and Cooking are connected. Cooking and Science are connected. Math and English are connected (seriously, read the book Science and Sanity).
And as you follow your curiosity you naturally start to learn about everything. Because it’s all connected.
Because it’s all connected, you’ll find that I will talk about a lot of different things in these emails and I will try to make those connections. Curiosity and education though is probably the topic I’m most passionate about. I could talk a lot more about how disastrous our school system is, and eventually I probably will share more about that, because if there is one thing I hope to accomplish with my life it’s changing how we educate the next generation. If we change how our children learn, I believe that will have the greatest impact on the future of humanity.
We need curiosity. Our future depends on it. We need curiosity so we have more creators, innovators and nurturers in the world. We need curiosity to succeed as a species, but for our society to succeed each one of us needs to succeed individually, and to succeed individually we all need to be curious. Those who succeed do so because they never stop being curious and they never stop learning. They have a hunger for knowledge that will never die. And that knowledge is what will help them conquer the challenges that life throws at them.
If there is anyone that knows something about success it’s Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin (a brand that now has over 400 different companies in different fields from music to spaceflight!), and he said, “As someone who didn’t finish school, I think it’s so important to become a lifelong learner and embrace curiosity about the world.”
Not everyone will be curious though. Right now curiosity is separating those who succeed and those who don’t. Those who follow their curiosity will be rewarded. And those who are not curious, well… I don’t think their futures look promising. The future belongs to those who are fuelled by their own curiosity.
Stay curious,
-Zach
Hello Curious People,
This is Zach. For my first newsletter I want to talk about the importance of curiosity. Let’s dive in.
Curiosity I believe is the great driver of human beings. From an evolutionary perspective and looking back to our early hunter/gatherer days, curiosity is what ensured our survival as a species. Curiosity is what would have saved us when we heard a small rustle in the bush and noticed a slight movement.
We’d question, ”What was that?”
Curiosity would make us pay attention and realize that there was a predator soon enough so that we were prepared to flee or fight.
Curiosity did more than help us survive though. Curiosity helped us thrive! Curiosity made us pay attention to plants and figure out which ones we could cultivate and so we left our hunter/gather days and became farmers. Curiosity lead us from inventing the wheel to the rocket ship. Would we ever have gone to the moon if we were not curious about what it was like up there? I doubt it. Without curiosity we would either still be hunter/gatherers or perhaps even extinct.
To be curious is to be human. We are all born curious, and children are naturally the most curious. Their curiosity is evolutionary necessary for their development so that they learn about how the world works. Children are full of questions. At some point though, a lot of people stop asking questions, and they stop being curious.
Why is that?
The regular day to day life of our modern world does not need us to be so curious to survive. We don’t have predators. Most of us don’t even need to hunt or grow our own food. Water is brought to us from a readily available tap. Life is easy. But just because life is easy shouldn’t stop us from being curious though. We still need curiosity to thrive! So why else are people becoming less curious?
I believe the culprit is our education system. School kills curiosity.
Children full of natural curiosity end up spending 13 years (including Kindergarten) in a system that dulls their sense of wonder of the world and by the end of all their schooling their curious spirits are dead. How does that happen?
Well maybe it’s because the #1 lesson that we teach children in school is that their curiosity doesn’t matter. What matters is that they learn every piece of information that the teacher (or the school curriculum designers) decides is important. You read the books you’re told to read, and only read the chapters that you’re told to read. If you read ahead because you find it interesting, you’re told that’s bad (true story ask my brother). Curiosity isn’t important. The curriculum is important. And after 13 years of following the curriculum, people no longer follow their curiosity. They only follow instructions from authority.
As the thirty year award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto wrote in his book Dumbing Us Down, “Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.”
By grade 12 if you have any curiosity left, you’re probably considered a weirdo. That was me. I was the weirdo in grade 12 who spent my spare block in the library reading the entire encyclopedia series about the history of the world and watching documentaries about science on the school computers instead of going to 7 Eleven to get a slurpee or just going home to play games.
Not everyone finishes school having their curiosity completely killed, but I believe it happens to a vast majority of people. You are most likely one of those lucky people who never lost your curiosity (I say this because I presume curiosity is what made you sign up for this newsletter). Perhaps it’s because you had good parents (or someone else in your life) who encouraged you to be curious. Or you homeschooled (like I did just for a couple years). Or maybe for some other reason you are one of the lucky ones.
You’re lucky because curiosity is important. When you are curious there is no limit to what you can learn. Because the more you truly learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. The more you learn, the more you realize how much more you still have to learn (A future email will be about the “Circle of Understanding”). And so you keep learning.
And the more you learn, the more you learn that everything is connected. The world is not like school where everything is separated. In the real world, everything is connected. Science and art is connected. Gym and Cooking are connected. Cooking and Science are connected. Math and English are connected (seriously, read the book Science and Sanity).
And as you follow your curiosity you naturally start to learn about everything. Because it’s all connected.
Because it’s all connected, you’ll find that I will talk about a lot of different things in these emails and I will try to make those connections. Curiosity and education though is probably the topic I’m most passionate about. I could talk a lot more about how disastrous our school system is, and eventually I probably will share more about that, because if there is one thing I hope to accomplish with my life it’s changing how we educate the next generation. If we change how our children learn, I believe that will have the greatest impact on the future of humanity.
We need curiosity. Our future depends on it. We need curiosity so we have more creators, innovators and nurturers in the world. We need curiosity to succeed as a species, but for our society to succeed each one of us needs to succeed individually, and to succeed individually we all need to be curious. Those who succeed do so because they never stop being curious and they never stop learning. They have a hunger for knowledge that will never die. And that knowledge is what will help them conquer the challenges that life throws at them.
If there is anyone that knows something about success it’s Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin (a brand that now has over 400 different companies in different fields from music to spaceflight!), and he said, “As someone who didn’t finish school, I think it’s so important to become a lifelong learner and embrace curiosity about the world.”
Not everyone will be curious though. Right now curiosity is separating those who succeed and those who don’t. Those who follow their curiosity will be rewarded. And those who are not curious, well… I don’t think their futures look promising. The future belongs to those who are fuelled by their own curiosity.
Stay curious,
-Zach
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