In this Ted Talk by Rúben Martins Da Costa, he explains how children are born curious. Using a quote saying, “Every kid starts out as a natural born scientist, and then we beat it out of them,” by Carl Sogan. He goes on to explain that kids have this innate curiosity but in grade school this curiosity in minimized by encouraging formulas and memorization rather than imagination. He explains that in recent discussion people have claimed that parents and teachers should model scientific inquiry to help children learn that it is good to make a hypothesis, test it, and sometimes be wrong. But, Rúben Martins Da Costa thinks that scientists themselves can be responsible for shaping the minds of young children by including interaction moments and by connecting with the children.
Rúben Martins Da Costa then goes on to give fascinating personal anecdotes about his interactions with children in scientific manners. He also brings up an interesting project where children are responsible, with the help of a mentor, to review scientific articles to make them more digestible for an adolescent ages 8-15. By doing this, the researcher gets a new piece of published work that is accessible for children, and the children learn the scientific review process and now have a piece of scientific information to read and learn from.
All in all, Rúben Martins Da Costa talk about the innate curiosity of kids, and elaborates on how to harness that curiosity and not dismiss it. He gives personal anecdotes and legit studies that have done exactly this to inspire others to include kids in scientific review. A great Ted Talk to listen to, and a great initiative to help bring kids into the world of research and help them flourish within their curious minds!
If you want to watch this Ted Talk click here!
Jenna Coplon
UConn KIDS, Research Assistant
