Curiosity Did Not Kill The Cat

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

Among the world’s most foolish aphorisms, this one stands out. It is quite likely that the lack of curiosity is more likely a fatal condition for cats . . . and humans.

Yet another lousy OpEd on education graced - or disgraced - the pages of the New York Times this week. The piece, by Adam Grant, organizational psychologist at Wharton (of course), is titled, No, You Don’t Get an “A” for Effort. Therein, he debunks the primacy of grit in the learning process. As standalone debunkery, I’d concur, but he appends that to a tiresome rant about how trying hard is necessary but insufficient. You also have to get answers right, dammit!

Apparently he and oh so many others have encountered students who think their effort alone merits an “A.”

Carol Dweck (grit goddess), Paul Tough (grit man), Angela Duckworth (grit lady) established a profitable industry around the notions of perseverance and grit, partially shifting the blame for failure from “You’re not smart enough,” to ”You’re not gritty enough.”

The rest of the column and the vast majority of nearly 2,000 (!) comments bemoaned the dismal state of American education, describing students as incurious, grade-grubbing, spoiled and ill-prepared for the challenges of the real world. Grant even managed a gratuitous swipe at “participation trophies,” the stalking horse for condemnation of my generation’s pushback against toxic competition. I still rather like the idea of participation trophies. It’s not as though the kids and their florid-faced parents don’t know who actually won.

Of course the Times seeks out education “experts” from the ranks of business schools and think tanks. Who knows better than organizational psychologists and economists?

Well, anyone who knows diddly about children and child development.

The reason Grant et al encounter the students they bitch about is that the students are arising from the lousy system that Grant et al have created: A system built on high expectations, skill acquisition, rigor, testing and reliance on extrinsic motivators like letter grades. “You’ve gotta get the answers right, dammit.”

I have neither space nor time to fully explicate the case against extrinsic motivation, but these linked sources are available if you wish to explore. Or

The ubiquity of extrinsic measures assures the gradual extinction of intrinsic motivation. Among the studies I have reviewed, the consensus is clear. Our schools effectively reduce intrinsic motivation to near zero by 8th grade. Qualities like curiosity are nearly extinguished as direct instruction, high stakes testing, and the insane accumulation of credentials to impress admission officers dominate. In my book and several blog posts I cite the humorous and sad example of a Princeton student who, when asked to write an essay about anything she wished, asked the professor, “What are we supposed to be interested in?”

So schools squelch curiosity and then organizational psychologists complain that students are incurious. Duh. Well-represented among commenters were college faculty members who just can’t fathom that their students want little more from their tired lectures than to know what’s going to be on the test.

All learning, especially in early years, can and should be inspired by curiosity. Curiosity leads to understanding and skills, not the other way around. It seems self-evident in every realm, if you give it a moment. If you watch any toddler, she is constantly exploring her world, learning through all her senses - seeing, feeling, tasting, listening, throwing, dropping and experimenting. By age 3 or 4, little humans know most of physics. They just don’t have the language and symbols to express their knowledge.

If children are exposed to beauty, they may strive to gain the skill to create it. My interest in the violin was not kindled by memorizing measures of music. It came from hearing the Cleveland Orchestra live and imagining what it might be like to make those glorious sounds.

If children gaze in awe at the stars in a black night sky, they will want to know more about them and might be drawn toward astronomy or physics.

I’ve watched kids who love baseball learn math, including rather advanced statistics, using math skills to better understand the sport.

Children should choose stories they love and learn comprehension skills to satisfy their natural curiosity. But instead, they must read what is assigned and will “be on the test.” My reading and writing abilities, for what they are, derived from my childhood obsession with sports, not from whatever dreadful paragraphs were on the SAT or from the meaningless sentences we “diagrammed.”

That should be the central intention of schools. Give children room to explore and experiment, then guide them to and through the linguistic and conceptual systems that encode and expand on what they’ve learned.

The continuum from curiosity to mastery should be the model for learning from early childhood until, well, death.