Almost every child, on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter, more c

Almost every child, on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter,

more curious, less afraid of what he doesn’t know, better at finding and 27 , more

confident, resourceful (机敏的), persistent and 28 than he will ever be again in

his schooling – or, unless he is very unusual and very lucky, for the rest of his life.

Already, by paying close attention to and 29 the world and people around him, and

without any school-type formal instruction, he has done a task far more difficult,

complicated and 30 than anything he will be asked to do in school, or than any of his

teachers has done for years. He has solved the 31 of language. He has discovered it

– babies don’t even know that language exists – and he has found out how it works and

learned to use it 32 . He has done it by exploring, by experimenting, by developing

his own model of the grammar of language, by 33 and seeing whether it works, by

gradually changing it and 34 it until it does work. And while he has been doing this,

he has been learning other things as well, including many of the “ 35 ” that the

schools think only they can teach him, and many that are more complicated than the ones

they do try to teach him.