11. Some family environments teach kids patterns and curiosity “automatically” … 1960’s study on language exposure as predictor of academic success Middle-Income families expose infants to 487 words/hour Welfare-class families expose kids to only 167 words/hour By age three, difference in # of words heard by middle-class kids vs. poor kid is 32 million fewer words1 1. from Hart and Risley, “The Early Catastrophe”
12. Stimulating summers matter just as much… 1980s John Hopkins study (referenced in Outliers) Summer break has huge negative impact on low-income kids compared to middle-class kids2 Low-income summer: lack of exposure to stimulating experiences, vs. Middle-class summer: summer camps, museum trips, books. 2. from Alexander, Entwisle, and Olson, “Schools Achievement and Inequality: A Seasonal Perspective”
15. Posit: Curiosity Spiral The more you know The more abstractions & links you make in experiences The more you perceive & experience in the world The more attracted you are to what you don’t know
25. Everywhere you go… IMAGINE IF EVERYTHING INSPIRED CURIOSITY… What if the whole world worked like Wikipedia? At each corner, at every turn, there was “zero” cost to explore deeper information? (Essentially the thinking behind the Semantic Web)
27. Alfalfa grass If language is a map that helps us see more deeply… Oat grass Orchard grass Then curiosity is like cartography…
28. Posit: Curiosity Spiral The more you know The more questions you have The more you perceive & experience in the world The more attracted you are to what you don’t know
29. “I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.” - Eleanor Roosevelt