Hint to Adults - Kids Are Curious | StarTalk

I don't know why people continue to concern themselves with getting kids interested in STEM fields. That's a mystery to me because all kids are interested in STEM fields. It's the adults that are the problem. The adults who run things, who wield resources, who have political, cultural, and economic power—those are the ones who are clueless. Not entirely clueless, but clueless enough to be bungling, stumbling along the way, trying to figure out what to do about the human forces on our environment or any matter of science literacy that affects us today.

I am too impatient to wait for the eighth grader to become old enough to run the country to say, "Now we have a scientifically literate leadership." Adults outnumber kids five to one. Kids are born curious, and they get beaten out of them by the time they're in high school. Adults spend the first year of their lives teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.

Every kid you've ever met is full of questions. That's what a scientist is: we're full of questions. The kid thinks that there exists an answer to every one of their questions and that you, the adult, have that answer. The great transition that a kid has to make is realizing that not only does the specific adult not necessarily have all the answers, there's some question they might pose where no adult has the answer because it hasn't been discovered yet.

These are the elements of curiosity we need to cherish in our children. But to presume it's not there when we have to put it in them? No. Take another look at your kids. The task of the adult should be to stay out of their way, let their curiosity run free, and let the children run free while the adults actually learn some science—those who were in charge.