Teach the kids: 'Natural' learning is 'slow, brutal' and sometimes fatal

Romantics dream of "natural learning" in the real world, writes Carl Hendrick. It's inefficient. Those who fail to learn -- do not eat that berry -- fail to survive.

"Schools exist precisely because natural learning is inadequate and profoundly inequitable," he writes. "We created artificial environments for learning because the natural alternative; waiting for children to stumble upon the accumulated knowledge of civilisation; is absurd and cruel."

"The classroom is a technology" designed to "transmit hard-won knowledge efficiently, without requiring each generation to pay again in blood and time for what the previous generation already knew," Hendrick argues.

Systematic instruction lets students learn step by step, building securely on prior knowledge, he writes. Instead of exhorting students to try harder or lecturing on resilience, teachers can create the best possible learning environment.

I suspect students who appear to learn "naturally" do so because their parents have built a strong foundation of knowledge, vocabulary and skills.

Robert Pondiscio writes about overhearing a woman on an airplane talking to her young child about what was happening, answering questions and using "words like aerodynamics, trajectory, turbulence, and maneuver."

Not every parent can do that. So teachers should teach.