teaching is overrated

Preschool lessons: New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire. - By Alison Gopnik - Slate Magazine

As so often happens in science, two studies from different labs, using different techniques, have simultaneously produced strikingly similar results. They provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children's learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific—this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

Teaching is overrated and direct instruction has very specific and limited uses.  Most people learn naturally and what was begun in mass schools as a few years (far shorter time span, in one-room, shared spaces with a calendar attuned to the agricultural cycle) of direct instruction in the three Rs has transformed into endless years 12++ of instruction, a practice that is lessening our native intelligence.