By Michael Blanding

Over a decade ago, Tinsley Galyean PhD ’95 joined colleagues at the MIT Media Lab (where he was then working as an instructor) in asking a provocative question: “Could kids around the world learn to read from a mobile device?” This led to a study in which they identified two remote villages in Ethiopia where literacy was nonexistent, gave the children there digital tablets—with very few instructions—and watched to see where curiosity would lead. 

“Within about four minutes, some kid figured out how to turn them on,” Galyean says, noting that the children continued to experiment with the devices, educating themselves. “After about a year, they were reading at about the same pace they would have been in a well-resourced kindergarten. It was mind-boggling.” 

To see if the experience could be replicated, in 2014 Galyean cofounded the organization Curious Learning with Stephanie Gottwald, who was then the assistant director at the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts. They set themselves the audacious goal of ending illiteracy worldwide. 

“Curious Learning has a simple mission, which is to give everybody the opportunity to read, and we are doing that through the proliferation of free apps based on the neuroscience of how the brain learns,” Galyean says. As he recounts in his new book, Reframe: How Curiosity and Literacy Can Redefine Us (Business Expert Press, 2025), scientific studies have demonstrated the power of curiosity in learning. “Research shows when you are in a curious state of mind, it activates your brain chemistry in a way that reinforces the neural pathways,” Galyean says. “It doesn’t matter what you’re curious about—whatever information you see next, you will learn more quickly.”