Born to Learn

[Music]

[Birds tweeting]

Ever feel like you’re capable

of far more than what society expects of you?

I know I do.

Remember being a teenage

and school being less about a passion to learn

and more about getting good grades?

How many times did you sit in class

bored and desperate to just get away?

Every teen’s felt that.

Albert Einstein acted on it.

Age just 15,

he’s sitting in class,

when all of a sudden,

he decides enough is enough,

gets up and walks right out the door.

He never goes back.

Remember being a kid

and just wanting to play around with stuff,

pull things apart,

knock things together,

and the grown-up saying, “No, no, no,”

or being called good for sitting still

or naughty when you couldn’t bear

to sit still any longer.

It’s all completely well-intentioned, of course.

But that doesn’t make it any less insane,

because the fact is,

our capacity to create and learn

knows no bounds,

and the latest research proves it.

The invention of MRI scans

only in the past 25 years

has allowed scientists to see

which parts of the brain

are used by different kinds of thinking.

We now know infinitely more than we did

about how we learn

and what makes up human intelligence,

and it’s extraordinary.

So want to know what you’re really capable of?

Let’s start at the beginning.

A baby’s brain is amazing.

It doesn’t take nine months to create.

It’s taken 7 million years

and around 350,000 generations.

All the skills, knowledge, and talents

cultivated by our ancestors

are stored inside it.

These are like numerous software programs,

which can only be activated

by the baby engaging with its environment.

Here’s the striking thing.

If not activated at the most appropriate time,

they simply disappear.

Take language.

If a child doesn’t hear language

by around the age of 8,

they may never learn to speak.

So you can see just how important

our interactions are.

They ignite our dormant intelligence,

and they reinforce it too.

There’s something else.

We’ve evolved to learn by looking at things

from different perspectives

and making connections between thing,

and we do that through play.

So wouldn’t it be amazing

if we bore all this in mind when raising kids,

letting them play when they’re little,

and when they’re older too.

Charles Darwin’s teacher said

he’d never amount to much,

because he spent too much time

playing with insects.

So let children play,

because it’s never just play.

Of course, it takes more time and energy

to do this.

But when you’re deciding where to focus

resources for kids learning,

you couldn’t do better

than focusing on pre-puberty.

That’s when we learn by copying

the people around us.

After 12, or there abouts, it’s all change.

Say goodbye to pliable, easy child,

and "Hello, rebellious, challenging teenager."

Lah!. Where did that cute baby go?

Oh, well.

Let’s have another look at that brain.

See what’s happening?

Loads of the connections

made through childhood

are breaking up and reforming.

From around the age of about 12 through to 20,

the equivalent of an earthquake

takes place in a young person’s brain.

No more going along

with what the grown-ups say.

The adolescent brain needs to go its own way.

“Oh, no.” say parents.

“Oh, yes,” say evolutionary scientists,

because if we hadn’t developed this urge

to do things differently,

we would never have made it this far.

Up until about 60 or 70,000 years ago,

it was fine for children

to grow up like their parents.

But then along came the last Ice Age.

Thank goodness for the handful of our ancestors

who chose to break away

from their doomed parents

freezing to death in the ancestral caves.

They built rafts and set off across the ocean,

hoping to find a place with a warmer climate.

Critically, this made risk-taking

the essential feature of adolescence.

We shouldn’t belittle adolescence.

We should be honoring it for what it really is—

the defining struggle;

the moment when the next generation

challenges the status quo

and pioneers new ways of thinking and being

that ensure our survival.

Now, just imagine if we actually gave

adolescents the freedom to undertake

that struggle,

rather than force them to sit passively in class.

How about trusting that their earlier

clone-like learning

now enables adolescence to spread their wings

and work things out for themselves.

If that sounds terrifying,

it needn’t be,

because if we allowed their natural curiosity

to flourish in childhood,

they’ll be bursting with the longing to learn

and climb unscaled mountains of the mind

and that’s not scary.

That’s exhilarating.

This is the way we’ve evolved to be.

It’s what makes us fulfilled,

well-adjusted human begins.

Let’s stop trying to live in a way

that so goes against how we’re hardwired to live.

Let’s allow ourselves and the next generation

to reclaim the incredible gift of our ancestors.

Adolescence is not a problem.

It’s an opportunity.