George Orwell's Essay 'Why I Write'

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In George Orwell’s essay, “Why I Write”, he states that he writes because he has a

“Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after”. In his book Curious, Ian Leslie writes about curiosity for the same reason Orwell writes any of his works. To push the world in a direction he believes is fundamental to our continuing growth. He emphasizes that being curious is an ability only given to humans. It is the 4th drive of humanity, the other three which consist of food, shelter, and sex. God gave it to no other creature. However, Leslie also stresses that curiosity is only built and expanded with experience and learning. In other words, it lies dormant within us until
Almost after every claim he makes, he uses studies to back up what he says. He tries to engage his audience into how being curious helps you in the future and how it begins. Leslie talks a lot about young children in his book, highlighting the point that they are the most curious humans. However, he doesn’t talk about why they are curious as much as he does on how their curiosity is built. Leslie claims that curiosity is established with the help of parents and their knowledge, therefore the children with more engaging parents, are the ones to be the most curious in the future. Leslie describes an American study in 1992 to back up his claim: “Why are middle- class children more likely to use questions to explore their curiosity?... Mother’s who asked more questions of their children had children who asked more questions of them” (Leslie, 92). He uses many studies that include younger kids, like this one, to encourage parents to associate with their children more intellectually, and allow them to pester you with questions. Another study that Leslie uses to show the effects of curiosity, is an experiment where fifty babies were studied up until they were fourteen. The experimenters discovered, “ the babies who pointed the most, grew up to be more successful than their peers in school ” (Leslie, 31). Before this, Leslie emphasizes that pointing babies are actually curious babies and with encouragement and help from family, these babies won’t lose their curiosity. By this he means without exercising your mental muscles, curiosity can be

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