What nurtures curiosity? What destroys it?

Craig Newmark has a link to a column by J. Peder Zane about children lacking curiosity. I agree with Craig that one of the more interesting quotes is:

"It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care about what they don't know."

Most complex problems in life have more than one cause. A good friend once claimed the hard problems could have as many as fifty causes. One of the reasons hard problems are so hard to solve is because a single solution will only affect part of the problem. Remember when trying to solve a complex problem that we may never be able to solve it completely. But if we can address some of the major causes, a big problem may become much smaller, to the point we don't have to worry about the problem nearly as much.

A lack of curiosity in this generation of children has many contributing causes. For example large amounts of time in front of a TV tends to encourage children to be less curious. They passively wait for an answer.

I believe one of the major causes of a lack of curiosity in our children today is the fundamental structure of the public school system. It is not designed to nurture children's curiosity. The public school system is designed to teach children according to a schedule, to move all of them along at the same pace, and in general turn children into passive receptacles, ready to receive the knowledge the teacher will impart to them.

What nurtures curiosity? Most little children have an endless supply of curiosity. A two year old can ask fifty to a hundred questions in a ten minute period. They want to know more about the world, they find it fascinating. When they ask a question, and it is answered, they are much more likely to ask another question. When they get a chance to explore the world, to investigate subjects they find interesting, they will continue being curious.

Fast forward to the same child ten years down the road. In a typical day at school the teacher might start teaching something interesting, like some of the causes of a war, or a new principle in math, or how to draw three dimensional figures. The child starts to get excited and wants to understand the new idea, but if he asks questions outside of what the teacher wants to focus on, the child will be told to stay on topic. If the child quietly tries to explore on his own at some point the teacher will end the class, or move the class on to another topic. This event occurs again and again in a public school. Some times their curiosity is nurtured and encouraged, but more often the public school slowly smoothers and destroys curiosity.

Getting children out of public schools and turning off the television would be some good first steps to solving this problem.