The Power of Curiosity

A couple days ago I read an article about a remarkable fossil found. The fossils are part of a "new" species called Australopithecus sediba. I put "new" in parentheses because the species is estimated to be around a couple million years old. It probably would be more accurate to say it was recently discovered. Anyway, the big hoopla over the fossils is that they are really old, quite complete, and may help bridge the gap between apes and humans in evolution.

I have now shared everything I know about fossils. I'm not up for a creation versus evolution debate today, either. In fact, I'm not as interested in the first half of the article as I am in the second. The story behind the discoveries is fascinating. It starts out usual enough, with a paleoanthropologist (Lee Burger) and a graduate assistant. However, Berger also brought along his nine-year-old son, Matthew. The rest is now history:

Google Earth's satellite and 3-D capabilities provided the technology and the ability to share information with other scientists. Berger and geologist Professor Paul Dirks discovered approximately 130 known cave sites and 20 fossil deposits in the area.

Once the sites were identified, it was time for Berger and his team to begin looking for fossils. But neither he nor his team were responsible for finding the first sediba fossils.

Berger's 9-year-old son Matthew made discovery.

Two years ago Berger took Matthew out to the site along with a graduate student and their dog. Like all curious little boys Matthew ran off to explore, and after traveling about 15 minutes outside of the site Matthew ran back and yelling, "Dad, I found a fossil!"

(source: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/fossil-hold-key-evolution-show-apes-humans/story?id=10320180&page=2)

That's right, after all that research and education by the grown-ups, it was the kid that wandered off in whatever direction for whatever reason, and made a discovery that he probably can't wrap his head around yet. He wasn't actively looking for anything. He was just being a nine-year-old, looking for a good time while Daddy did his job.

That's probably a little romanticized. How many nine-year-olds can identify a fossil in the wild? The kid has some knowledge, and probably has accompanied his father on other explorations. It's still a super cool story though. Matthew was simply curious to see what was out there, and when he found something he thought was cool, he had to show his Daddy!

I'm a little jealous. I think the coolest thing I ever showed my dad was a bee hive I spotted on the eave of our roof. My dad didn't have any troubles containing his excitement. ABC News didn't report on it either.

Anyway, I'm not bitter. I salute Matthew, and I have already filed away his story in a safe place. It will come in handy some day.

One thing that constantly frustrates me when I tutor high school math is how math gets portrayed. Virtually every student sees math as a tangled web of equations, formulas, and functions. Everything is rehearsed repeatedly in homework. It's so mechanical, and it seems to drain the students.

It drains me to watch it.

Also, it's not just in math. For instance, I learned chunk writing in high school. Just about every basic skill learned in school has been broken down into a basic, repeatable, learnable, process. I don't think that's a problem by itself. Actually, it should be very helpful.

What frustrates me is that processes should be tools. Somehow, they have become more than that though. Education, far too often, is zapping students of their natural curiosity.

The current system seems to engrain in students that success is solely about sticking to the specific path outlined by the processes learned in curriculum. It's an assembly line approach. A student comes in, one teacher gives them this, another that, and at the end of the year they come out the end altered as desired, and altered in the same way as every other student. Or, as education likes to put it, things are "standardized."

The story of Matthew and the ancient fossil is a powerful metaphor. The adults took an assembly line approach. They had specific strategies, a carefully devised method, and in general were using the processes they had learned and acquired. Matthew, on the other hand, had no approach at all. All he had was curiosity. Fifteen minutes later, Matthew was the one screaming "look what I found!" while the adults were sifting through dust.

Now, I'm not promoting educational anarchy. Matthew had a much better chance of finding something thanks to his father's strategies. It was his father's research and strategic exploration that put him in position in the first place. However, old-fashioned curiosity, with no learned method or strategy attached, is what finished the job. In the end, it was a blend of knowledge and curiosity that brought forth a great discovery.

Education can't lose sight of curiosity. Curiosity needs to be fostered and promoted, but I think standardization tends to suppress it. A nine-year-old can find a missing evolutionary link with it. Curiosity is pretty powerful.

Favors

I worked with a high school student yesterday on their math homework. I had not worked with this student before, and the first words out the student's mouth were, "I'm no good at math." That's not the first time I've heard that out of a student's mouth, and I'm sure I have many more times to look forward to hearing that too.

As I started working with the student, I found out a little more about him. He is an athlete, and was quick to talk about football. This student was quickly gravitating towards the jock archetype in my head.

By the way, "jock" isn't necessarily a bad title in my head. I am a big sports fan, and I was interested to hear about this student's football career. I think sports can be very powerful and educational, and often they are. However, with the fame and glory around athletics, they are also prone to corruption.

In particular, the student I worked with yesterday might have already experienced a taste of it. About halfway through the worksheet, he told me his math teacher last year was a big supporter of the football team - so big that the student thinks the only reason he "passed" is because he is on the football team.

I don't know the teacher, and I didn't see any of this student's math work from last year. I have no idea what really happened. That doesn't really matter though. Perception is reality, and this student perceived that he got a favor because he plays football.

In the end, all I really did was point at a helpful formula in the student's textbook, and that's almost all he needed to figure out the assignment. He was incredibly thankful though. He said it is the first time he has got an assignment done in a long time. There were fist bumps after every other problem or so (he is an athlete after all). This student was clearly enthused to get his math homework done, and to do the work himself. He even flashed remarkable mental math abilities, commenting that he doesn't like to take shortcuts with his work.

I worked with the student for maybe 15 minutes, but it was fascinating. I am inclined to believe that this student was passed through the system for some reason, and perhaps it was football. It also seems reasonable to assume that the math teacher thought it was better to pass him through than not.

However, the strategy backfired. Is it that surprising this student had no confidence in his math abilities, when he thinks he didn't earn the math grade he got last year? Furthermore, I don't have a great feel for how much the student likes math, but he clearly demonstrated a good work ethic, a desire to learn the material, and the potential to master the content. That doesn't sound to me like the type of student that needs to be passed through any class.

I think anyone would say that a teacher isn't doing a student a favor by giving free rides. However, I think people tend to assume that the alternative meets some resistance from the student. Clearly, at least in some cases, that isn't so.

Unpaid Internships Exploited

Quickly becoming a staple of undergraduate college experiences are internships. At first blush, this is a good thing. It gets a student's feet wet in a career path they are interested in, and will have the skills to go into after graduation.

Not all internships are created equal though. In particular, some are paid, and others are not. You would think paid and unpaid ones to look different, and you are right.

There are problems in the differences though.

Moreover, there are problems with unpaid internships, as this New York Times article discusses. It should not be too surprising either. A for-profit company is still looking to make a profit, even when they offer internships.

In theory, an internship is an educational opportunity for a student. However, if a company is primarily worried about making a profit, what stops them from exploiting unpaid interns for labor? Interns have absolutely no experience or seniority, so they aren't likely to cry foul. Interns could jeopardize their entire career before it even starts by speaking up. Advantage: company, in a landslide. In fact, given the leverage companies have over interns, what's stopping a company from making interns do the jobs nobody else wants to do? It's not that far-fetched to see a board of directors incorporating unpaid internships into their business model.

Unpaid internships could easily be used by companies to increase profits. Anecdotal evidence screams loud and clear that it is happening too, and may have been accelerated by the slumped economy.

This is what happens when worlds collide. On one hand, we have colleges and universities concerned with giving their students an educational experience outside the classroom that helps them when they enter the "real world." On the other, we have future employers constantly looking for ways to increase their bottom line. Their motivations are not going to change, even when a university opens up their student body to them.

That's not to say that companies and university don't have some shared goals. There are benefits on a company's end to letting students get a taste of what working at their company is like. If all goes right, that student will be a more qualified employee when they hit the work force, and the student will  perhaps prefer to work for that company over others. In a perfect world, this is how internships work. They should benefit everyone involved.

However, a business is still a business, and it seems the invisible hand shoves unpaid interns towards menial tasks the company does not want to pay someone minimum wage to do. To me, the easiest solution is to only let organizations with non-profit status offer unpaid internships. It may not fix everything, but it would go a long way towards limiting the exploitation going on now.

It is disheartening how easily education gets tossed to the wayside sometimes.