In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.

Learning is paced for a lifetime, not for a term. Cramming a great deal into a child produces a good showing at the end of the year and very little that survives, because the pressure teaches them that knowledge is something you get through rather than live in. Speed also crowds out the thing that matters most: whether they still want to know anything by the time they are grown.

If you teach or parent, ask whether the pace is set by the child or by the calendar. Slow one thing down and go properly into it. Curiosity intact at eighteen is worth more than any amount covered by ten.