What's the Most Important Subject?

A radio show recently asked the question - What's the most important subject for children in the early grades? I've been mulling this over, and my answer is.... curiosity. If children have curiosity, all else will come naturally. My most important job as an early years teacher is to facilitate this.

Children are hard-wired to explore. Newborns explore with smell and touch. Babies taste everything. Three-year olds need to know why. By the time children enter my grade three/four classroom, they have observed, experimented, and concluded trillions of times in their short lives. As a teacher, I have to choose whether to shut down their curiosity in the name of "classroom management" or to facilitate it.

If children have curiosity, they will want to know how things work (science), why things happen (social studies), how much/how many/how big/how small (math), what those books with the interesting pictures are telling them (reading), and will want to share that information with others (writing, the arts). From curiosity flows our entire curriculum.

As teachers, our most difficult job is to help children find answers in a way that encourages their curiosity, rather than stuffing them with information that we assure them they need. At the end of a school day, do our students need to take a break from learning? Or do they hunger for more?