Activity

In addition to not yet having the hangups Deutsch mentions, I do think children are often more rational than adults in important ways, such as:

• being able and willing to refuse the unwanted loudly and clearly – children are often better at his than adults
• not sacrificing one’s own problem situation for the teachers’ and parents’ problem situations (ie focusing on one’s own goals without compromise)
• disliking and rejecting the arbitrary, including authority

Due to this last point in particular, children are sometimes better scientists than adults!

Also consider how fantastically creative children are, often way more creative than adults. (For example, it is extremely difficult for most adults to lose their native accent when they speak a foreign language, but bilingual children often do this effortlessly.)

There seems to be a general rule of thumb that, the older a person gets, the less knowledge he creates. So who’s the better problem solver, children or adults?