Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track

12. The Preschool Years

The passion for lifelong learning—tireless, all-embracing, persistent learning—manifests itself in every person from the moment of birth. Ideally, during the early years, children should have the opportunity to explore the world around them freely; they should be allowed to figure out, in their own way and at their own pace, how to handle the objects and people they come into contact with so that they can fashion for themselves a model of reality that will develop in scope and in depth as they proceed through life.

The common view is that children are rather passive creatures at birth and, unless there is constant active stimulation by adults, they will not develop properly. This view is also widely held to be true for ...