Students lack curiosity in classrooms

Students lack curiosity in classrooms

JAKARTA (JP): As a university lecturer, one quality I
absolutely want to see in my students is a healthy dose of
curiosity. Unfortunately, this is real life we're talking about,
where you don't always get what you want.

As much as I want to see curiosity, it's not there sometimes.
The students come to class like empty vessels waiting to be
filled.

In some cases they are vessels with holes in the bottom, so
that no matter how much you pour in, by the next week you'll find
only a scant trace left. I would very much prefer my students to
be sponges instead of vessels.

By sponges I mean that they should be ready to absorb all the
knowledge available out there and hold that knowledge in the
small pores of the sponge.

Somehow, without us knowing it, curiosity died.

This is very sad because without curiosity how is it possible
to learn? Without curiosity, how is it possible for new
inventions to be conceived? Without curiosity, how is possible to
be creative?

Remember back to your childhood when you would question just
about everything: Why do stars shine? Where do butterflies come
from? Why does it rain? And, perhaps, even the question which
gave your parents headaches in explaining: Where do babies come
from? All of these questions are signs of curiosity.

Now remember how creative you were as a child, taking a bed
sheet and turning it into a castle, or taking a stick and
transforming it into a mighty sword.

Curiosity and creativity are definitely related. Children are
very curious and as a result they are very creative as well. They
invent things to fill up their magical, make-believe world.

However, something happened in the growing up years. Children
lost the curiosity they had. It's almost as if being a grown up
meant that you should no longer ask questions. This can clearly
be seen in the classroom.

Every time the teacher asks: "Any questions?", there is dead
silence. Suddenly students find that the dirt on the sole of
their shoe is more interesting.

It's even worse when the teacher asks a question. The
students' eyes dart this way and that, looking at everything
except the lecturer, as though eye contact would mean the
lecturer would expect them to answer the question.

Students are both afraid of asking questions and answering
questions. The reason for their fear varies. Some students don't
ask questions fearing friends might laugh at them. Some students
don't ask questions fearing that the teacher would bite their
heads off for not understanding something that had already been
explained.

Other students don't say a word in class because either they
think that "silence is golden" or they have their minds somewhere
else so they wouldn't even be able to come up with a relevant
question.

It's difficult to change the students' attitude toward the
habit of asking questions. The students have been accustomed to
staying silent in class for 12 years.

Teachers should really encourage their students to ask
questions. Questions are signs of curiosity. If they are asking
questions that means that they want to broaden their knowledge.

Jordan Ayan, author of Aha! 10 Ways to Free Your Creative
Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas, uses a funnel to describe the
relationship between curiosity and knowledge. The flow from the
neck of the funnel represents what you have learned over a life
time, that is "what you know".

Contained in the large part of the funnel is all the knowledge
that you know is out there, but which you have not yet had the
time to learn. This is "what you know you don't know".

Above the funnel is a vast open area which is the amount of
knowledge out there without you being aware of its existence.
This is "what you don't know you don't know".

In being curious, you are trying to get more of the "what you
don't know you don't know" area to the "what you know you don't
know" area so that later on it could flow through the neck of the
funnel to the "what you know" area.

There is so much knowledge out there above the funnel and so
little time to make it flow through the funnel. It is time to
encourage questions in children instead of telling them that
they're asking too many questions.

If we encourage this in children from a tender age, we might
save ourselves the trouble of sending kids to extra classes after
school because they would already have the curiosity to learn
more about the new things they encounter in the classroom.

Let's do what we can to bring curiosity back to life again.
There may be a flat line on the EKG (Elektrokardiogramm) but
maybe we can jump-start it back to life.

-- Laila Faisal