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The Question-Driven Life

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This article is more than 9 years old.

Fascinating piece by David Brooks about Kenyan Philip Leakey, who grew up in the Kenyan outback, and how his education had absolutely nothing to do with grades.

"Some people center their lives around money or status or community or service to God, but this seems to be a learning-centered life, where little bits of practical knowledge are the daily currency, where the main vocation is to be preoccupied with some exciting little project or maybe a doze," Brooks writes.

We are born with what some psychologists call an "explanatory drive." You give a baby a strange object or something that doesn't make sense and she will become instantly absorbed; using all her abilities - taste, smell, force - to figure out how it fits in with the world.

www.nytimes.com

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