Ep. 169: Susan Engel - Every Child is a Curious Child

Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function

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What is an intriguing difference between a four-year-old's versus a forty-year old’s approach to the world? Only one of them is inquisitive and inventive with a rich inner explorer. However, by the time the curious and inventive four-year-old enters their late teens, there is a remarkable depletion in their sense of exploration. There’s something about the way we educate and raise children that drains their inquiring minds from investigating life’s mysteries and tackling problems that interest them.

On this episode, Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College and author of multiple books including The Intellectual Lives of Children, Dr. Susan Engel, discusses what fuels children’s curiosity: a sense of inquiry and inventiveness. To raise self-sufficient children who possess strong executive function means to figure out ways to hang back while nurturing their inner Dora the Explorer.

About Susan Engel
Susan Engel is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. She is co-founder of an experimental school in NY State, where she was the educational advisor for 18 years. Her research interests include the development of narrative, curiosity, and invention. Her current research examines how children pursue ideas. Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Cognitive Development, Harvard Educational Review, and the American Education Research Journal. Her writing on education has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg View, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Huffington Post, and The Boston Globe. Her books include: The End of the Rainbow: How educating for happiness (not money) would transform our schools, The Hungry Mind: The origins of curiosity in childhood, and The Children You Teach: Using a Developmental Framework in the Classroom. Her ninth book, The Intellectual Lives of Children, was published by Harvard University Press, this past January. She and her husband Tom have three sons and two very young grandchildren.

Books:

• The Intellectual Lives of Children
• The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood
• The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our Schools

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

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