Dr. Francis Collins is one of America’s leading scientists. With both an M.D. and a Ph.D, he led the team of scientists that mapped the entire human genome. It is an extraordinary accomplishment in the history of science.

In a recent interview, Harvard's Dr. Henry Louis Gates asked Dr. Collins if there was any special spark or any moment in particular that inspired him to pursue a life of science. Dr. Collins replied that in fact there was.

He said that when he was in high school, on the first day of his first science course, the teacher handed each student a box. The boxes were sealed on the outside and hollow on the inside. But each box contained something. And as young Collins turned the box on its side and turned it around, he could hear something rolling around inside. What was it?

The teacher told the students that their assignment was to determine what was inside the box.

They could design any kind of test or ask any kind of question that would lead them to find out what was inside the box. But they couldn’t open the box. They had to first find ways to figure out what was in the box.

That’s what science is, the teacher explained: being curious, and figuring out questions to ask, until you find out the answer.

Dr. Collins was hooked.

He said that that day in class completely changed his life. From then on, he was committed to spending a life in science, where his job was to be curious and ask lots of questions.

This model of education is “education from the inside out.” We experience internal curiosity and then look outside for answers to our questions.

But all too often, in actual practice, the process of education follows a very different narrative. The teacher serves as an authority figure who is in possession of the answers and imparts those answers to students, who are responsible for “learning” them.

This is “education from the outside in.”

It denies students the key emotional connection with the question, an ownership, which comes from the emotion of curiosity.

Walter Isaacson’s magisterial biography of Einstein, Einstein: His Life and Universe, shows that Einstein’s view of learning was similar to Collins.’

Isaacson quotes Einstein as saying, “Don’t listen to the person who has the answers. Listen to the person who has the questions.”

Another time, Einstein said, “I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.”

So there are two different approaches to learning: from the outside in, which is based on the transmission of data from an authority to a student; and from the inside out, where learning is ignited by the spark of curiosity.

Which is your style of learning?