I am attempting to read Six Easy Pieces by physicist Richard Feynman along with Miss A this year. So far the the several introductions have been interesting and readable enough, but it remains to be seen whether I can keep up when we start digging into the actual physics stuff. 😉 The book started out as part of a series of lectures he gave to students back in the 1960s, and I was encouraged by this quote from Feynman on his convictions of the superiority of a close teacher-student relationship over lectures given to a large class:
…the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher – a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things.
I don’t know about the “good teacher” part, but I’m thankful that homeschooling my kids affords them the opportunity to talk (narrate) about what they’ve learned and discuss ideas, as well as time to just mull them over. 🙂
