The Power of Children's Curiosity to Learn: From Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico to India, Africa, and the World, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Power of Children's Curiosity to Learn: From Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico to India, Africa, and the World

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Oct. 29, 2025

It’s truly awesome to be an educator because I’m always learning—often in the very spaces where I teach. Last night, in my Race, Ethnicity, and the Schools course, we viewed the extraordinary film Radical, based on a true story set in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico—just across the border from Brownsville, where children grow up in the shadows of SpaceX, a striking symbol of both aspiration and inequality. I actually wrote a blog about the film back in December 2023, but revisiting it with my students brought new insights. 

I had invited members of the community to join us, including several teachers, and was deeply moved by what unfolded. One of our guests, Patricia Nuñez—who is pursuing her doctorate in Cultural Studies—shared the story behind Sergio, the visionary teacher portrayed in the film. His approach, she explained, was inspired by the groundbreaking work of Indian educator, Sugata Mitra, whose experiments in self-organized learning among children in India, Africa, and beyond have redefined what is possible in education. 

I can see how Sergio’s approach could be controversial—his methods defy convention and challenge deeply ingrained notions of authority, assessment, and control in schooling. Yet that is precisely what makes his story so powerful. He invites us to imagine what education could look like if curiosity, rather than compliance, became the organizing principle of learning. 

In communities too often written off as “deficient,” such radical trust in children’s capacities becomes an act of resistance—a declaration that brilliance is not the privilege of the few but the birthright of all. 

The movie is available on Amazon Prime. I encourage all to see it—and to connect it to Sugata Mitra’s work as captured in the TED Talk he delivered a number of years ago, linked below.

What Radical ultimately teaches us is that transformative education begins with trust and a caring relationship between teachers and students. It asks us, as educators, parents, and community members, to look beyond limitations and see what is possible when children are given the freedom to learn, to fail, and to discover for themselves. 

Watching my students and community guests wrestle with these questions yesterday afternoon reminded me that learning is never a one-way exchange; it’s a shared act of courage and imagination. It was a joy for us to bridge all our worlds—university and community, theory and lived experience, teacher and learner—and to find common purpose in our love for education and justice. 

Moments like these remind me why I teach: because every time we gather to question, listen, and dream together, something sacred and transformative takes root.

In Sergio’s classroom—and in our own—we are reminded that radical hope is not naïve. It is, rather, the lifeblood of every genuine effort to teach, to nurture, and to believe in the brilliance that already lives within every child.

996,804 views Sep 7, 2010 http://www.ted.com Indian education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10