Curiosity never killed the cat

I recently found out that the birth of the World Wide Web began in a laboratory at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) by a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee.

I also learnt that they had retained the first website in the world and that you can view it here.

How I came upon this exciting information (it was a discovery for me!) was through a You Tube video titled ‘The Web is not the Net’ by Vsauce, a wildly popular educational channel among kids with over a million subscribers.

Now, at the risk of sounding like a kid myself, I am going to say that Vsauce got me very excited with titles like ‘What is the speed of dark?’, ‘What if the Earth stopped spinning’ and ‘Why don’t we all have cancer?’, I had unwittingly forgo the latest episode of Homeland (that’s a feat), spending the next hour with quirky host Michael Stevens instead as he narrates the workings of science to me in the most fun and creative manner.

"What if the earth stopped spinning?" - Vsauce

The content is appealing. It drove my inquisitiveness.

These two important elements, I feel, are what’s lacking in the teaching and learning ecosystem.

Back in secondary school, I was in the science stream; not because I was particularly keen in science or mathematics, it was where the aspiring 'top’ students go to. Science, supposedly, secures a better future too, as I’ve been told.

While in the science stream, my memories of conducting stimulating experiments at the school’s laboratory were far and few in between. Instead, the two final years in high school was spent poring over books and endless tuition classes in preparation for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM).

By the end of SPM, I had sworn off science subjects although I did excel in all the science subjects.

Was I naturally not gifted in science? Or was I product of a dreary, learning environment and a biased obsession over the amount of A’s, instead of play?

Going back to Vsauce, it had me questioning about the future of learning.

At our fingertips are all the tools that can significantly transform how we learn and teach. Has the present education system caught up with the powerful shift yet?

Do teachers today employ the same teaching methods as they did during my time in school?

Why are we still hovering on the issue of equitable access and underuse of technology when these tools are readily available?

While we now have access to infinite amount of information, are we equipping kids for the needs of the future? The US Department for Labor had estimated that 65% of today’s primary school children will end up at jobs that haven’t been invented yet. How do we prepare them?

While certain parties still find reasons to question the use of English language for Science and Mathematic subjects, I wonder why are we not pushing for coding, the language of the future, as a subject in school?

Will schools and teachers be obsolete in the future?

Winner of the 2013 TED Prize Dr. Sugata Mitra believes children can teach themselves and each other, if they’re motivated by curiosity and peer interest, even in the absence of formal teaching.

We have an ambitious education transformation framework called the Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025, which maps out steps to address some of these questions.

It is a good plan but above all, I feel, is to not forget to bring the excitement of learning to the classroom or even at home.

This is because curiosity is the biggest, most important, drive towards intellectual growth and achievement.