what_teaching_could_be

Today, I’d like to put kids in the richest possible environment and let them choose.
It would not be school, with formal classes, summer breaks, and so on. 
It would be a safe place that is open all the time. 
A place where one might, or might not, encounter people reading aloud in one hall or organizing a puppet show,
with home-made puppets or building a saltwater aquarium with bacterial filters. It would have zoomable
binocular microscopes by the doors to the play areas, so that found leaves and rocks could be examined closely. 

I’d want kids to take breaks whenever they feel like it, to play outside or sit with a book in a corner —
even if they kept that up for a year or more. They know who they are and what they need better than we ever will.

I think I’d have kids make their own plates and silverware and insist that the only hard and fast
requirement for someone who wants to teach math is an honest curiosity, evident by the number of 
popular math books read per year (there are lots of good ones).

Cooking, for those who like it, is the most direct experience with chemistry most people will ever have.
It is an experience kids ought to be able to have, if they want it.

I’d replace teachers with adults ready to lead the way into an understanding of the world by reading 
themselves, playing with problems, painting and drawing, experimenting with electronics and programming.
If it is really good stuff, kids will figure that out. If it is not, well, you can’t teach it to them.