Children are Scientists

Thousands of experiments confirm that babies learn about their environment through a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas. They experience sensory observations, make predictions about what they observe, design and deploy experiments capable of testing their predictions, evaluate their tests, and add that knowledge to a self-generated, growing database. The style is naturally aggressive, wonderfully flexible, and annoyingly persistent. They use fluid intelligence to extract information, then crystallize it into memory. Nobody teaches infants how to do this, yet they do it all over the world. This hints at the behavior’s strong evolutionary roots. They are scientists, as their parents suspected all along.

John Medina, Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five (2010-10-12)

• children
• experience
• intelligence
• science
• scientist
• wonder