Tinsley Galyean on Curiosity, Technology, and Redefining What’s Possible
It doesn't do you much good if you're financially stable, but you're not actually servicing your mission.
This is the third installment of Builders of Justice, a series that profiles leaders who refuse to play it safe—challenging power, naming harm, and reimagining justice.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early 1990s, Dr. Tinsley Galyean was among the first ten people to come out of the MIT Media Lab with a PhD. His background spanned electrical engineering, computer science, and the visual arts, a combination that shaped nearly two decades of work exploring how children engage with media and technology.
He built museum exhibits, developed educational content, and studied user experience. After shifting into the nonprofit space and helping launch the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, he joined a research project asking a simple question: Is it possible for kids with no other resources to learn to read from a curated set of apps on a mobile device?
To answer this question, the research team he was involved with identified two remote villages in Ethiopia where literacy was nonexistent, gave the children digital tablets with minimal instructions, and observed where curiosity would lead. Within four minutes, the children figured out how to turn them on. In less than a year, they reached the same literacy level as well-resourced kindergartners in the United States.
“It kind of blew us away,” Dr. Galyean recalls.
That moment led him to co-found Curious Learning with neuroscientist and linguist Dr. Stephanie Gottwald. Over the past 11 years, the organization has reached over five million children across 60 languages in places where traditional education infrastructure hasn’t worked, or doesn’t exist at all.
Technology as the hero? This isn’t that kind of story. It’s a story about what becomes possible when you stop imposing solutions and start creating opportunities instead.
The Puzzle
If you look at Curious Learning’s mission statement, the wording is plain and simple: to give everybody the opportunity to learn to read.
In other words, to provide tools and access that open doors for people to step through on their own terms without the savior complex.
“If that’s the way you’re operating, everything becomes a partnership,” Dr. Galyean explains. “You’re in partnership with a kid who’s using the app, and you’re trying to understand how it’s working for them and how it’s not. You’re in partnership with a parent who downloads the app and makes their phone available to it. You’re in partnership with the teacher who decides to use it with their students.”
This approach shifts the relationship by integrating into people’s lives instead of expecting them to change how they live to match your ideas of what they need.
That’s why Curious Learning operates in 60 different languages, collaborating with 250 to 300 native-speaking subcontractors. The science shows that it’s best to learn to read in the language you speak. But more than that, it meets people where they are.
“It’s inherently part of the puzzle if you’re trying to provide something that can fit into the lives of the people you’re trying to help instead of asking them to change the way they live and work to do something you think they should be doing.”
The Science Behind Engagement
Dr. Galyean’s background in children’s media taught him that you don’t work successfully with kids unless they’re engaged and excited about what they’re doing.
“Learning is a byproduct of that engagement,” he says. “The traditional education system doesn’t work that way. We put bums in seats, and then we tell them what to do, and they learn.” Because children are required to go to school, educators feel less pressure to create learning activities that are truly engaging and connected.
His co-founder, Gottwald, brought over ten years of research on how the brain learns to read into their work, an equally vital element. Their approach is guided by neuroscience in ways traditional curricula haven’t been, emphasizing which skills need development and how the brain truly forms them.
Another insight Dr. Galyean gained from neuroscience research is that when people self-report feeling curious, their brain chemistry activates, making them more prepared to absorb information. Their brains become primed to myelinate neural pathways and retain what they learn.
The fascinating part? “When you’re in a curious state of mind, you learn anything that’s put in front of you, even if it’s not what you’re curious about.”
This is why Curious Learning has steep learning curves. They stimulate children’s curiosity by how they present information, creating a curious mindset within learning content that guides kids on their journey.
Limiting Beliefs and the Screen Time Debate
In his book Reframe: How Curiosity and Literacy Can Redefine Us, Dr. Galyean argues that illiteracy stems from limiting beliefs.
He explains that we all form beliefs shaped by family and social influences. These beliefs influence our choices but can also blind us, causing us to miss opportunities without proper consideration.
“At some point, those beliefs have us dismiss things before we’ve fully thought about the opportunities, and can put blinders on us so that we’re not seeing those opportunities that would move us towards what we want to achieve.”
This happens on individual, organizational, societal, and even global levels.
Take screentime, for example. There’s a common belief that it’s harmful for kids. While concerns about too much social media use and inappropriate content are valid, dismissing it completely as bad overlooks its potential benefits. When you accept that it’s simply bad in all cases, you lose a tool that could actually be helpful.
“There’s a big difference when television came around, of watching something that’s totally inappropriate for kids versus watching Sesame Street. The same is true of screen time on a mobile device. Can we not shut down that conversation without looking at the nuance?”
The reframe: Too much screen time and the wrong kind can be harmful, but there’s a chance to use it properly to enhance lives and expand learning.
“What do we want technology to do for us? How can it add to human flourishing? When does it distract from it?”
He advocates for self-reflection on how technology influences our feelings and encourages mindful choices about whether certain uses harm our well-being. Those who use technology can also help promote this conversation for everyone involved.
“That will naturally steer things towards using it for productive, you know, human growing purposes.”
Curiosity itself acts as a tool to overcome limiting beliefs. When a conversation ends, or when a belief halts exploration, being open to curiosity can help restart it.
“If you can open up to curiosity in those moments and ask questions without judgment, you create space to unearth the beliefs and preconceptions both of you may hold.”
The System and Its Contradictions
Dr. Galyean observes contradictions embedded in education systems at the highest levels, beliefs that are mutually incompatible yet somehow coexist.
“Traditionally, education has been structured as something that you have to gain admission to be part of. Every level is a winnowing process, in that it’s only available to those who can reach that level.”
In a traditional system where education is a scarce resource, this filtering process holds importance. It might not be fair, but it’s a method to handle scarcity.
But consider the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, which clearly states that the goal is to provide everyone with the opportunity and access to education throughout their lifetime.
“So now we’ve reached a time in history where we have a system that was inherently built to selectively allow different levels of education to be available only to certain people. And yet, we aspire to make it available to everybody. How do we reconcile that?”
The traditional approach doesn’t address the problem. Government education systems teach based on a schedule rather than mastery. They promote students to the next grade regardless of whether they have mastered the material. In systems where skills build on previous skills, once students fall behind, it becomes nearly impossible to catch up.
“There are lots of things in there that are antithetical that just don’t work with each other to make it a reality.”
Dr. Galyean highlights that new technologies offer alternative ways to deliver learning both within and beyond traditional structures. However, it requires reform and a shift in mindset.
“In my experience, the easiest way to get them to change is to just do it and then let them see what’s possible, and then step in to figure out how they can incorporate those new ways of thinking. It’s a much bigger lift to go in and try to convince them that there’s a better way to do things.”
The Problem With Perfection
Dr. Galyean openly discusses society’s unrealistic expectations of perfection, a challenge affecting the entire nonprofit sector.
“The nonprofit sector is often trying to take on problems that have never been solved in human history, problems that the governments and corporations with massive budgets have not been able to solve. And yet, we’ve somehow decided that we’re going to try to take these problems on, but there’s the expectation in society that we do it on a shoestring budget, and we never get anything wrong.”
He contrasts this with venture capital: “If you’re an investor, and you’re an early venture capitalist investor, and only one in eight of your companies succeeds, you’re considered a success. If you’re a foundation, and one in 80 is a massive failure, you’re raked over the coals for it.” In other words, VCs can fail 87% of the time and still be celebrated. Foundations fail once in 80 attempts and face public condemnation.
“That creates a situation where we’re not sharing our failures as a collective community. And that’s unfortunate, because it means we’re not learning from them. And we’re not understanding the landscape that’s been mapped by having tried those things.”
Numerous research institutions, government agencies, private companies, and individuals built the internet over many decades, sharing what they learned and recognizing that most would fail but that everyone would benefit from those failures. Alan Kay, an early pioneer in computer science who helped develop the internet, told Dr. Galyean that this open, collaborative communication about what works and what doesn’t is the key to major change.
“We’re not anywhere close to replicating that in the nonprofit space right now, unfortunately.”
Rethinking Sustainability
Funders often ask, What’s your sustainability strategy? How will you reach a point where you no longer need their funding? These questions assume that organizational survival is the main goal, that success means becoming financially independent and ensuring the institution outlives its original purpose.
Curious Learning challenges that thinking. They include in their charter that the board is responsible, every few years, to ask different questions, such as, Has the world reached a point where we’re no longer needed? Has our work inspired and cultivated enough other organizations to carry it forward? Have we created our own obsolescence?
“By staying true to that over building an organization that’s about fundraising and long-term financial health, we stay more true to our goal of why we were founded. And I think it serves our beneficiaries better to have that focus.”
He adds, “It doesn’t do you much good if you’re financially stable, but you’re not actually servicing your mission. That’s not really a healthy organization either.”
Learning Unbound
When Dr. Galyean envisions a world where literacy barriers no longer exist, he foresees new technologies and infrastructure being developed worldwide, opening up fresh channels for education and learning, and redefining what education means and represents.
“In many ways, it’s democratizing the access to it.”
Those of us who have had the privilege of being well-educated and have already redefined ourselves multiple times in our careers can see this happening. We don’t go back to school every time we need to reeducate ourselves for new work.
This is the future Tinsley aims to create, building opportunities that align with it, meeting people where they are, sparking their curiosity, and allowing them to step through doors into new possibilities.
The work is about staying curious enough to keep asking better questions. It’s about being honest about what we know and don’t know, what’s working and what isn’t. It’s about building partnerships rather than imposing solutions. It’s about understanding that the beliefs we hold, individually and collectively, shape what we see as possible.
And sometimes, the most radical thing you can do is reframe questions entirely.
Dr. Tinsley Galyean built Curious Learning upon the belief that everyone, everywhere, deserves access to quality education, and that through the growing reach of smartphones, it is possible to eradicate global illiteracy. As CEO, he oversees the operations of Curious Learning and reflects upon these operations to understand how they can improve themselves and become better at achieving their mission. It was the combination of his entrepreneurial background as well as his experience in technology and user experience, in particular in children’s media, that gave him the skills needed to bring Curious Learning to life.
Learn more about Curious Learning at curiouslearning.org.