How Education Stagnates Children's Development: The NASA Research That Proves It

What if I told you that nearly every child is born a creative genius, but our education system systematically destroys this gift? Research from NASA reveals a shocking truth: 98% of young children think at genius level, but by the time they become adults, only 2% retain this ability. The culprit? Our conventional education system.

Children's Natural Drive to Learn

Children want to learn. Every child has an innate need to develop, including your child. Your child also wants to 'show' themselves. They want to show what they can do or have learned. When the soul is free to choose, the soul naturally chooses the development that best suits their future role. As long as the soul feels comfortable in their environment, the soul continues to develop. First toward their life path and then subsequently on their path. No matter how old the body becomes, the soul wants to keep growing. Your child therefore always commits to developing, provided they get the space and the right environment.

As you've read, school does more harm than good in this regard. The negative beliefs that children teach themselves during school years hold them back in their later adult life. They will first have to believe in themselves again before they can continue their path at full strength.

What Intelligence Really Means

Over the years, I've met enough people to be able to say that intelligence doesn't depend on education level. Many smart people don't succeed at learning in the academic way, while less intelligent people sometimes have talent for learning. The level you achieve only means that you (don't) know the curriculum in the way it was offered at that time. Your grade actually only says whether the teacher did their job well and whether the curriculum fits your life path. It says little about your intelligence and more about your way of learning.

Intelligence manifests in how you make connections, how you can look beyond the information you have, how you can empathize with other people's viewpoints and decisions, how solution-oriented and creative you are, and how lovingly you treat the planet, nature, animals, and people. Intelligence determines how you approach life and what choices you make, not whether you pass a test. If you stand in your power and remain connected to different learning opportunities, then you are by definition intelligent. This applies to everyone, including your child.

The Problem with Age-Based Systems

Moreover, the current system is organized by age and not by talents and personal development. One child reads at four, while another child doesn't develop this until age eight. One child learns like an owl, the next like a tiger. The order in which a child learns something also depends on their own development. We still expect every child to go through the same development at the same age, but this goes against natural development. As a result, we ask children either to wait too long to develop their talents, or to learn skills they're not ready for yet. Neither case is pleasant for the child. The school system would do better to start from trust that children want to learn and that they learn things when they're ready.

NASA Research on Creative Intelligence

That education stagnates children's brains also emerges from NASA research. NASA, together with Dr. George Land and Beth Jarman, developed a test to measure the creative potential of NASA's rocket scientists and engineers. The test proved highly successful for NASA.

To better select people who have the talent to come up with innovative and groundbreaking ideas, they also administered the test to children. The scientists tested 1,600 children aged 4 and 5, and they tested these children again five, ten, and fifteen years later.

The scores are clear: of the 4- and 5-year-olds, 98% score as creative geniuses. After five school years, 'only' 30% of these geniuses still score as geniuses. By age 15, the figure has dropped to 12%, and at adult age, only 2% of this group still scores as geniuses. This research has been repeated, by the way, so the results are reliable.

Two Types of Thinking

Researchers say we have the ability to get back to 98% if we want to. From what researchers have discovered in studies with children and from research into how brains work, there are two types of thinking that occur in the brain. Both use different parts of the brain.

One is called divergent—that's imagination. This part is used for generating new possibilities. The other is called convergent—that's when you make a judgment, you make a decision, you're testing something, you're criticizing, you're evaluating.

So divergent thinking works as an accelerator and convergent thinking brakes our efforts.

Researchers have discovered that when we educate children, we teach them to have both types of thoughts simultaneously. When someone asks a child to come up with new ideas, the child also learns through judgments from tests and assignments at school to immediately evaluate their own plan: 'We've tried that before,' 'I'll probably get a failing grade,' 'It won't work,' and so on. Your child also learns that they are judged on their creativity and that this judgment can also be negative.

Research shows that neurons fight with each other and actually diminish the power of the brain when we constantly judge, criticize, and censor. When we work with that fear, we use a smaller part of the brain. When we think creatively, the brain simply lights up and people come up with more creative solutions.

A different approach is possible

School can offer more room for creativity and other ways of thinking. Currently, children mainly learn what adults think is true.