I want to talk a little bit about how we shut children’s thinking down by mistake. I believe that we can all make huge shifts in our children’s abilities if we pay attention to the impact our words have on them. We often look for the outputs of learning, when in fact we should be focusing on the inputs and the processes of thinking.
We really don’t mean to, we often just want to keep our kids on task or on track. The opposite of shutdown is awake, curious and enthusiastic. It’s very interesting because one of the ways we can either shut children down or open up their worlds is our response to them when they ask a question.
I am writing this today because of something that happened at school. The teacher handled it really well, but it could have gone very differently.
The teacher was doing an Afrikaans lesson, and while the kids were waiting for her to sign the books, one of the kids came up with the idea that a car is a living thing. Another child argued that he was wrong, the car is not living. What an incredible opportunity.
The opportunity was to tap into the natural curiosity that he had at that moment. His eyes were bright and wide, he was speaking with passion and his voice clear, he was smiling and he was leaning forward. His whole body was experiencing curiosity. That is what focused attention looks like, it is the state of being we want children to be in for learning. Think about when you’re interested in something, you lean forward, your eyes open, and you smile slightly. You might tilt your head toward the speaker. Your whole body listens and leans in. What if that is shut down?
A teacher or parent has the power to shut that down in a child, in an instant, by not recognising this state of mind and going with the flow. We shut them down when we stop them with statements like: I asked you to come inside, stop and finish your work, we’re doing Afrikaans now, not science. We shut off the tap of energy and our children learn to stop being curious.
There are certainly times when that is going to happen. And we’re definitely not perfect. We’re not going to get it right every time, but if I can bring your awareness to this then you can start noticing where you do it. You can notice the instances where you can stop doing it in order to drive curiosity, in order to drive learning and attention.
Instead of shutting it down, because that’s the worst-case scenario, maybe you can be more neutral or even shift your language to be more positive and develop that experience for a child. The experience of how curiosity feels in their body, how glorious that feeling is. It’s like being fully alive.
Even if they’re wrong, in fact, especially if they are wrong the learning happens, not in correcting a child, but in the questioning. Exploring the question to its conclusion. It’s not actually about being right, it is about learning. I have a personal story that explains my point of view.
When my daughter was in Grade 2, the teacher would mark her simple maths problems in her book as wrong when she used her memo sheet. She would write the maths sums on the board and the class had to copy them down for homework. I was told that she couldn’t do maths. What was happening? My daughter was transferring the sums from the board into her book incorrectly, and then the teacher was marking the memo.
If the sum was 2 + 2, she might have written down 2 + 3 = 5. She was getting the maths correct, but the teacher was marking it wrong because her memo said the answer should be 4. These are vastly different skills. One is about copying off the board, the other is about maths. I was getting feedback that my daughter can’t do maths. The one is a remedial teaching issue, the other is something for an optometrist to check. We need to be very, very careful with our observations and feedback. Her maths skills were being shut down and she was losing confidence.
This little guy today was having this great argument, and he was making good points about why a car is living. If we really look for what is, rather than our agenda, we support curiosity.
We shut down learning when we tell children they’re wrong. We shut off the curiosity-experience when we tell them we’ll learn about that next week. When we get to next week, he’s not curious anymore and we give feedback that this child struggles to learn. Curiosity turns on the brain and the learning switch. The more a child experiences this focused attention, the more pathways and connections in his brain are exercised. We learn what we experience, not from our experience. That is to say that what we experience, sticks.
As much as my teachers are prepped for the week, they still respond to the opportunity to develop the underlying skills of learning, of which curiosity is a big one.
What we are doing is not making the child wrong, but helping him to lean into this feeling of curiosity and excitement and his brain being switched on fully. We’re taking this idea that he has and we’re slowly helping him to move with it. He is building his experience. If the teacher shuts him down, he would have learned the experience of: when I’m curious and other people think I’m wrong, I get shut down, maybe I’m not prepared to be wrong again and curiosity hurts.
None of us do it intentionally, it’s just something that I can bring to your awareness that you can start thinking about.
The story that sticks with me even today is a time about a decade ago when I was preparing the school for the beginning of the year. I was out on the field picking up litter. Nobody else was around, except for a grandmother, a mother and her son. These 3 generations walk up the hill together, hand in hand. I remember smiling thinking, isn’t it wonderful? The mom and the grandmother were chatting away. As they got closer to me, I watched this little boy point at a rabbit. His eyes lit up. He was holding his mom’s hand with his left and with his right hand he pointed at the rabbit.
I wasn’t close enough to hear what he said. He might have tugged on his mom’s hand while pointing excitedly at the bunnies. But his mom didn’t respond. I watched him bid for her attention at least five times, the rabbits would hop, then switch, then shake. He continued to point and try to show his mom this exciting thing that was happening. The mom and the gran still didn’t respond, they were too engrossed in their conversation.
Eventually, he put his hand down and looked forward and carried on walking with the mom and the gran, unheard. His excitement and curiosity were unattended.
I’m assuming they were wonderful with their child, this was not a failing in terms of the person, it was a failing in the moment. Watching that was the same as what could have gone wrong today. The child shows an interest in something and we shut it down.
Curiosity matters. It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong, in fact, it’s irrelevant. These opportunities are not about our light being lit with their flame, it is about putting a bit of air on the flame they have created and getting them thinking.
Lean into that moment. Find a way to bring their ideas out. Help them to explore the topic, research, question, learn, and think.
If you try this, you’re going to turn their brain on, you’re going to turn on their learning switch, turn on lifelong learning, and keep them a curious learner.