‘Today I Learned’: 50 Interesting Things People Didn’t Learn At School (New Pics)

Staying curious is a life-long aspiration for many, since learning new things makes us feel like we're living in the present moment. It’s no secret that new experiences make it feel like time slows down. That’s why, for example, a week while travelling abroad feels much like a year.

Collecting memories is one wonderful way to learn new stuff and broaden your horizons, but the coronavirus has drastically altered the usual modes of travelling and it’s unclear whether the pre-pandemic travelling we were used to will ever resume.

But the experts say that curiosity is something we stimulate and ignite from within. And going into the world with your heart open to new things and experiences, it all starts from a very early age. So to find out how exactly the complex urge to indulge in the novelty of things works in both children and adults, Bored Panda reached out to Jamie Jirout, an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology: Applied Developmental Science at University of Virginia.

First of, Jamie said that we have a limited amount of attention and learn from our experiences. But “as young children, there is so much that we are surprised by or don’t understand, and things are so new.” Every single child is born naturally curious to try and understand the world, and in addition, “we have no competing demands on our time—it’s the job of young children to play, which is how they explore what it is they are curious about!”

However, Jamie explained that “when children begin formal schooling, attention becomes placed on learning specific things, which aren’t always things that children are curious about.” Their goals change from exploring what they are curious about to learning what they’re being taught at school.

Moreover, “Motivation research identifies academic goals as being either mastery or performance—mastery goals are those that are driven by an intrinsic desire to understand something—exploring something you are curious about simply to find an answer or understand is an example of a mastery goal.”

“Performance goals are those driven by extrinsic factors, like wanting to get good grades or avoid getting in trouble. If children are given a lot of performance goals, being curious about things outside of what they are going to be tested on or need to do to get good grades can actually make being curious come at a cost to meeting those performance metrics,” Jamie said.

The professor also told us that there’s a great amount of research on children’s curiosity in schools that found that “children seem to become less curious the older they get.” “However, a recent study that asked children what it is they are curious about found that many children continue to be just as curious as they get older, even about things like science topics, but that they don’t associate being curious with learning at school,” she added.

Incredibly, the findings suggest that it isn’t necessarily that people become less curious with age, “but that they have less opportunity to be curious and act on curiosity, especially in school settings,” Jamie explained.

But Jamie believes that almost everything we know and do can be practiced, as “the more we practice something, the better we are, and if we don’t practice skills we can lose them,” and added that “it’s important to provide opportunities for children to be curious so that they can continue to naturally ask questions and seek information.”

“No less important is continuing practicing thinking of things we’re curious about through our adulthood as well as practicing the process of seeking out information to answer our questions, which often leads to further curiosity,” the professor concluded.