Learners are encouraged to discover facts and relationships for themselves.
The essence of creativity is figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.
We are storytelling creatures, and as children we acquire language to tell those stories that we have inside us.
Being able to “go beyond the information” given to “figure things out” is one of the few untarnishable joys of life.
The foundations of any subject may be taught to anybody at any age in some form.
We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development.
Understanding something in one way does not preclude understanding it in other ways.
Good teaching is forever being on the cutting edge of a child’s competence.
Grasping the structure of a subject is understanding it in a way that permits many other things to be related to it meaningfully. To learn structure in short, is to learn how things are related.
The main characteristic of play – whether of child or adult – is not it content but its mode. Play is an approach to action, not a form of activity.
The young child approaching a new subject or anew problem is like the scientist operating at the edge of his chosen field.