As I stated earlier, it isn t realistic to ask a child to determine what he shall learn. Mature decisions cannot be made in ignorance of the facts. But this much having been said, it remains equally true that unless the child also wants to learn, no amount of teaching will ensure that he absorbs anything.
Effective teaching requires the student s willing cooperation.
Thus, whatever system of education one follows, it must be flexible enough to provide for the shifting needs of a large variety of students. It must be child-oriented. A teacher may have specific information that he wants to impart, but if his students are not ready to receive it, his immediate job must be either to help them to receive it, or else to teach them what he thinks they can receive. One of the mistakes often made by teachers, and by lecturers in all fields, is a tendency to be satisfied if they can convince themselves rather than their audiences. A good talk, however, whether a class or a lecture, is always in a sense a dialogue, even if one person does all the speaking.