Embracing Mistakes: The Role of Curiosity in Education

Human history is full of amazing innovations! We have gone from caves to homes that we can monitor from our phones. But, man, we’ve made some serious errors too.

Let’s not forget that we thought the earth was the center of the universe, that it was perfectly normal to use mercury to make hats, or that methamphetamines would be a great over-the-counter medicine to help with nasal congestion. Yeah, turns out we’re wrong a lot. I mean, when I was a kid, there were nine planets in our solar system; then, one day in 2006, we find out that there were only eight planets the whole time.

The problem isn’t being wrong about ideas or perceptions (thank goodness); the problem is not adapting when we find out new information. When we look back on history, it’s not people who made mistakes that we scorn. No one dislikes Ptolemy because he thought Earth was the center of the universe; we don’t (usually) view doctors from the 1930s-1950s as villainous even though several recommended smoking cigarettes to their patients and to the general public. But where would we be as a society if we’d left the final word with Ptolemy or the tobacco-happy docs? The people we look back on with disapproval are the ones who didn’t seek, accept, or integrate new information. We’re not usually big fans of the Roman Inquisition imprisoning Galileo for his ‘heretical’ heliocentrism theory, and we don’t look too adoringly at tobacco companies who continued marketing cigarettes as safe, even after the risks were well-known (studies showing the cigarette-lung cancer link were published in the 1940s and 1950s; the first Surgeon General’s report linking the two was released in 1964; tobacco companies’ advertising continued to target youth for another 34 years).

In both cases, it would certainly be more convenient to maintain the status quo, but at what cost? In the first example, we see that the world ultimately embraced the new understanding of the solar system, leading to massive paradigm shifts in physics, navigation, and the role of humans in the universe. In the second example, we see almost 500,000 deaths per year in the United States caused by smoking.

Even when we certainly, definitely, and completely understand something, we actually might not. Being open to new information and discovery is how humanity progresses, even when it’s inconvenient at the time. This is the fundamental reason we need education—not to teach people to repeat information to pass examinations, but to teach them how to ask questions that allow them to conduct their own examinations.

Curiosity and creativity are innate human qualities, but they need to be inspired and encouraged. An educator’s responsibility to support students’ questions and interests is sacrosanct—and not just to the benefit of their students, but to benefit all of us. We all benefit from great discoveries like sunblock, soup dumplings, antibiotics, and the fact that mercury shouldn’t be in our headwear (or most other places).

“Creativity is as important now in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.”
~ Sir Ken Robinson