Feynman, a legendary teacher, was remarkably humble about his ability to know how someone else should learn something. For some students, that's very interesting, for others not at all - they want to know what the facts are, and never mind how they were discovered. And of course those were just two of countless other possibilities. Other students might be interested in applications to social problems, others may have pure delight in the magic and mystery of mathematics, and so on. That's the only way I can see, to catch this guy or that guy on different hooks as you go along, so that during the time when the fellow who's interested in history is being bored by the abstract mathematics, the fellow who likes the abstract mathematics is being bored another time by the history - if you can do it so that you don't bore them all, all the time, perhaps you're better off.
Education is an atomistic process, conforming to the atomic hypothesis.
And individual learning is what happens when one human atom interacts intellectually with other human atoms without being bored, intimidated or otherwise squeezed dry. John Gehl is editor and publisher of Educom Review.