In kindergarten classrooms, a subtle tragedy unfolds daily. Five-year-olds who entered the room bursting with questions begin learning to swallow them. The transformation is as predictable as it is heartbreaking.
Young children are natural scientists. Their brains light up with dopamine when they stack blocks, mix paints, or press buttons simply to discover what happens next. They’ll dismantle a toy not to break it but to understand it, mixing curiosity with fearlessness in perfect proportion. Studies show they ask more than 100 questions daily and not for validation, but from genuine wonder. Why is the sky blue? What happens if I drop this? Why do adults go to work? Each answer sparks three new ones, creating an endless cascade of learning driven by intrinsic curiosity rather than external rewards.
Around age six, something shifts. The questions slow, then transform. External metrics like grades, praise, comparison with peers, begin replacing the internal compass of curiosity. The fear of being wrong gradually outweighs the thrill of discovery. School systems built on standardized answers leave little room for experimental thinking. The child who once proudly announced “I tried it five different ways!” now anxiously asks “Is this right?” The scientific mind doesn’t disappear; it goes underground, buried beneath the weight of performance anxiety and social conformity.
This is less a critique of education than an observation of how we might rebuild it. When we understand that children’s natural experimental mindset represents not immaturity but sophisticated learning machinery, we can design environments that preserve rather than replace it. What if assessment measured growth through experimentation rather than conformity to answers? What if we valued the quality of questions as highly as the accuracy of responses? Perhaps then we wouldn’t have to teach adults elaborate frameworks to recover what they once knew as children: that curiosity, not certainty, is where true learning begins.
What knowledge gap are you carefully hiding rather than turning into an opportunity for discovery?
