We Need to Teach Kids Creative Thinking, and We’re Teaching Them the Opposite

"Education is far less about a set of facts than a way of thinking," says professor and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. "And therefore what I always think should be the basis of education is not answers, but questions." In this video interview, Krauss explains why it's vital for young students to be taught more than just basic skills. They need to be taught to solve the sorts of problems not conveyed on a test. An adequate curriculum could only be derived from the wisdom of experts. This is why Krauss supports the idea of a common core, although not one hinged on stringent testing. "Being able to know specifics to pass a test is not the same as being able to understand how to go about answering those questions."




Lawrence Maxwell Krauss is a Canadian-American theoretical physicist who is a professor of physics, and the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. He is an advocate of scientific skepticism, science education, and the science of morality. Krauss is one of the few living physicists referred to by Scientific American as a "public intellectual", and he is the only physicist to have received awards from all three major U.S. physics societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics.