4 Reasons Why Curiosity is Important and How to Develop It

Working with children, this is one area that we may be losing fast with a generation so used to getting instant gratification.

Donald, I agree strongly with all of this except point #4 which I strongly disagree with. The “giants” you mention were not indiscriminate dilettantes who found all ideas equally interesting. There is no democracy of ideas: some ideas are better, deeper, more interesting, or simply more relevant to the things that matter to you. Smart people who actually accomplish something develop very strong prejudices about what is interesting and what is boring. We all have limited time and limited intelligence and we need to apply them wisely. That’s just basic economics.

DO take the things for granted, but don’t hesitate to change your mind, if you see a good reason for doing it.

Until you remove curiousity you will never understand that it is amongst the most important emotions in life and without it life can become quite difficult.

eww gross!!

Einstein ON EDUCATION

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein

· To Einstein, individual freedom was the ultimate morality and, in 1933, he made his famous declaration, “As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country where political liberty, toleration and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule.” He personally asked nothing more from life than the freedom to pursue his research into the mechanism of the universe. He felt the physical, social, political, intellectual and spiritual freedom of all individuals was essential and wrote, “In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent, according to their personal characteristics and abilities.” He said the most essential kind of “outward freedom” involved social conditions “of such a kind that the expression of opinions and assertions about general and particular matters of knowledge will not involve dangers or serious disadvantages for him who expresses them.” He felt this freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge. He defined “inward freedom” as the development of science and the creative activities of the spirit, “an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy objective for the individual.”

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. ….

· Einstein went on to say that schools and the community can and should do much to further this achievement of inward freedom by encouraging independent thought or “at lease not interfering with it.” He said that all too often schools interfere with the development of inward freedom through authoritarian influences and through imposing on young people “excessive spiritual burdens”. He wrote, “The worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, sincerity and self-confidence of the pupil, producing the submissive subject . . . The only rational way of educating is to be an example – of what to avoid, if one can’t be the other sort.”

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
Albert Einstein

…………

· Einstein wrote in ON EDUCATION that schools should develop in youngsters “those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean individuality should be destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. A community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. Instead, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who see in the service of the community their highest life problem.” He also felt it important that people not take themselves or others too seriously and valued humor “in its due place”.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein
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· He felt that a school’s main goal should always be to produce individuals who are “harmonious personalities”, not specialists. “If a person masters the fundamentals of his subject and has learned to think and work independently, he will surely find his way and will be better able to adapt himself to progress and changes than the person whose training principally consists in the acquiring of detailed knowledge.” At the 1990 OATAG Conference, Dr. Smutny stated that she felt education has focused too much on technical brilliance and achievement and “separated our heads from our hearts.”

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
Albert Einstein
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· Dr. Smutny also stated, “A sense of conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart like nothing else can.” Along the same line, Einstein wrote, “It is not the fruits of scientific research that elevate a man and enrich his nature, but the urge to understand, the intellectual work, creative or receptive . . . I believe one does people the best service by giving them some elevating work to do.” ….

· Albert Einstein was not only an extraordinary scientist and mathematician and an extraordinary philosopher, moralist, and teacher, he was an extraordinary human being! We can learn from him not only quantum physics, but how to educate our children, especially our gifted children. We need to change our school systems to help encourage the development of the “inward freedom” of independent thought. We need to allow our children the freedom and opportunity to develop “harmonious personalities” as well as “the gifts which may be latent” in them. We need to teach our children to not only tolerate differences between individuals and between groups, but to welcome their enrichment of our existence. We need to teach them that science, mathematics, technology, philosophy, ethics, spirituality, music and the arts are all merely “different branches of the same tree”, all with the same purpose of ennobling the lives of individuals and enabling society to achieve its “richest flowering.”

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein

It seems Albert Einstein had unschooling and Sudbury schools in mind, by what he just described above!

http://www.unschoolingamerica.com/

http://www.sudval.org/

Lol – but how do I stop people from wondering about different ways to kill me for being so annoyingly curious about everything!

am very curious and sometimes i thinks am the most curious person, coz i always want to know whats taking place all over the world.always reading books, watching news, documentaries, inquisitive….etc
jeremy
Uganda