So the list goes. To do this is surely to throw away deliberately one of the most valuable agents of intellectual discipline. The evolving of a workable definition by the child's own activity stimulated by appropriate questions, is both interesting and highly educational. Good geometry instruction can mean much - learning to organize a subject matter and learning what is organizing, learning to conceptualize and what is conceptualizing, learning to define and what is a definition. It means leading pupils to understand why some organization, some concept, some definition is better than another.
Traditional instruction is different.
Rather than giving the child the opportunity to organize spatial experiences, the subject matter is offered as a preorganized structure. All concepts, definitions, and deductions are preconceived by the teacher, who knows what is its use in every detail - or rather by the textbook author who has carefully built all his secrets into the structure . Although Std 6 pupils may memorize given formal definitions and regurgitate them in the examination, they are unlikely to accept, understand and appreciate them. Another problem with just providing pupils with ready-made definitions is that the misconception is invariably created that there is only one correct definition for each concept. The possibility of correct alternative definitions simply does not arise in such a situation.