Engaging the 21st century child : relevance and curiosity

Questioning is an approach advocated at many sessions over the past week, so perhaps I would raise a few questions for us all to think about.  J

To engage children in learning, almost all presenters put RELEVANCE is a key tenet. Initially, I thought we all know what relevance means. But on second thoughts, I have 2 questions:

1.         Is relevance to the real world necessarily mean relevance to the child?  E.g., teaching Mathematics and Science through a problem on Soccer and World Cup would be considered relevant to the real world. However, there may be students in the class who have zero interest in soccer and do not care about why 23 men are running after 1 ball. So is relevance to the real world sufficient to engage our children?

2.         Children are naturally curious. But they may not be curious about everything under the sky … and beyond. While we make learning relevant to them, how do we nurture their curiosity in a wider scheme of things?

Lai Leng