Education Researcher · Author · Former Harvard Innovation Lab
Tony has argued for over two decades that curiosity is the most important thing schools can nurture — and the thing they most reliably crush. Since 2014, he has been a voice for what reweave is building.
a reweave believer since 2014, when we were still called Better World EdTony Wagner on curiosity as a muscle · 3:44
The average five-year-old asks a hundred questions a day. But then something happens — we call it school. Curiosity just kind of withers as kids get older with more experience in school.
You're giving curiosity new life. And that curiosity becomes a kind of springboard for having a reason to want to read and write and use math. You're giving them a context to apply literacy and numeracy.
We don't work enough on real-world applications of skills. Always for the test. As opposed to: tell me what you learned about that culture. What made you curious? That math problem — can you think of something in your own life that's similar?
Because wordless videos give kids — all kids — access at the same time, in the same way. There is no preferential treatment because you do or do not know English. It is a universal language and it levels the playing field.
We can't teach these things as add-ons. It's got to be embedded, for both very practical and profoundly educational reasons. Motivation matters most.
The video is like a giant question mark with no prescribed answers. You have to figure it out. And then you realize the skills you need involve getting better at math and writing and reading.
In his research — from interviewing CEOs and innovators for The Global Achievement Gap to his work at Harvard's Innovation Lab — Tony found one skill that mattered more than any other: the ability to ask really good questions.
School rewards right answers. The world rewards good questions. Wordless human stories from real people, with no narration and no prescribed answers, give every learner the practice of asking. Every time. From every background. In every setting.
Tony first engaged with this work in 2014, when reweave was still called Better World Ed. His support helped shape the belief that curiosity and academic rigor are not opposites — they are the same thing, when the context is human enough.
Tony's most comprehensive argument: why empathy cannot be bolted onto a curriculum as an add-on, why wordless films function as active learning tools that connect math, literacy, and global empathy at the same time — and why the ability to ask really good questions is what every CEO says matters most, and what school never actually teaches.
Tony Wagner · the full conversation · 5:23
teachers, students, and Tony Wagner · 2:52
verbatim, from interviews he gave to reweave. no paraphrase. no summary. just what he said.
"I think of curiosity as a muscle. The average five-year-old asks a hundred questions a day, but then something happens we call it school. Because you see, the longer kids are in school, the less curious they become, the fewer questions they ask. So to me, at the least, this would be a way to really continue to nurture and develop the muscles of curiosity and interest and in the end engagement."
"Academic content knowledge still matters. You still got to know stuff. Skills matter more in the 21st century. And motivation matters most. Because if you're self-motivated, you will continuously learn new skills and new content knowledge all your life, as indeed we all must in the innovation era."
"The wordless videos are not passive. You have to construct an understanding by asking questions, by reflecting and talking with your peers around a table about what you just saw and what it meant. You have to construct a deeper understanding. It's active learning. We conventionally think about videos as passive learning. Well, no, not in the case of a wordless video."
"We can't teach these things as add-ons. It's got to be embedded. You're creating one more compartment, one more splinter, as opposed to helping kids see the world in a more interdependent, interconnected way."
"When I interviewed CEOs for the Global Achievement Gap, they told me that problem identification was the single most important skill they sought. Even in very high-tech worlds, it was the ability to ask really good questions. School so often is about getting more right answers. The more right answers you get, the higher your GPA. It doesn't stimulate or reward asking good questions. But the world out there -- that's what the world cares about. And I think that's what wordless videos can stimulate: good question asking. And that's extraordinarily important today."
"Because they are wordless, they give kids -- all kids -- access at the same time in the same way. There's no preferential treatment because you do or do not know English or any particular language. It's a universal language and so it levels the playing field."
"You're giving them a context to apply literacy and numeracy. We don't work enough on real-world applications of those skills. Always for the test, as opposed to: tell me about what you just learned about that culture, what interested you, what made you curious, what would you like to learn more about. You're embedding reasons to learn that connect young kids to other people in other worlds."
Pick one. Watch how it works. None of these are mock-ups, they are the actual product.
his research, his ideas, and why it matters.
Real people from across the world. Wordless films and real-world math built around their stories. Start for free.
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