Inspiration
Let Your Curious Child Jump Into That Puddle. Here’s Why!
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American Astrophysicist & Author, shares about his upbringing and how parents and teachers today can instil curiosity in the young minds of their kids.
The child’s wonder and curiosity about the world around should be as natural as it will be theoretical. For example, to learn about ripple-effect, jumping into a puddle of water sounds like a better idea than merely reading about it in a science book. Agree?
It’s true that kids are a physical and emotional extension of their parents while they depend on their teachers for early education. To raise them well in an era of dynamic changes is an uphill task and may restrict their all-round development if parents and teachers are not careful.
In a trending online video, Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American Astrophysicist, Author, and science Communicator, can be seen sharing about his upbringing and the kind of secular parenting he received as a child. He gives the example of his father telling him that “it’s never enough to be right…it’s actually important to be effective.”
Tyson then gives the example of a mother-child duo that happened to catch his attention. He shares how he felt when he saw that this mother restricting her child to jump into a puddle of mud on a rainy day, while the kid seemed pretty excited about the idea. “At that moment, she killed this child’s curiosity,” he sighs.
In this hour-long talk, he reminds parents and educators to not restrict their children from wondering and rather think of ways to develop their questioning habit. Giving another example, he points out how we often tell the little ones to not touch the glass/mug kept on the edge of a table in a fear that it might fall down and break. In a situation like this, he suggests, we must let them touch and play with it. Breaking will teach them a thing or two about the concepts of gravity, the splashing of water, etc. He adds, “Children are the source of chaos and it is the responsibility of parents to clean up the mess.”
The Astrophysicist argues that kids shall be allowed to experiment with their surroundings and unleash their natural curiosity. He strongly feels that parents and the education system nowadays are slowly failing the children by putting disciplinary and academic restrictions on them.
In the video, he also gives an insight into how the schools and educators should try to preserve, embed and promote curiosity in children rather than filling them with information that will only fetch them good grades, that may create excellent professionals but not the intellectual giants.
In the end, he leaves us pondering over a fact that if we notice our children happy when they don’t have to attend school, there is something wrong with the teaching methods or the school system as a whole.
ScooNews thinks that giving young minds any kind of strict instruction will only make them robotic. We should instead strive to preserve this curiosity starting from the school days itself. If you wish to watch his talk called 'This is Exactly How You Should Not Raise Your Kids!,' click here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv0kQbOIrjY.
Image courtesy: VOX, The Daily Telegraph