The child’s Absorbent Mind, the best of all teachers, works most powerfully when the environment is richly but sparsely prepared and when the adults slow down and offer themselves, their relationships, and own doings as an exquisitely gracious manner model – always and ever an offering, never an interference, distraction, or imposition. Imposing, distracting, and interfering in the child’s development and learning leads to resistance and results in the necessity for direct or hard teaching. Hence our conventional schools’ reliance on assignments, tests, grades and homework, all enforced by reward and punishment.

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