Stop Sanding the Interesting Edges Off Your Child

We almost called TheHomeschoolingCompany Rabbit Hole. I think education should let a child follow a serious interest far enough to become exceptional at it. The usual impulse is to keep moving, smooth out the differences, and make sure everyone occupies roughly the same place. But those interesting edges are where a particular person's ability begins to show. Why would we sand them off and then wonder where original people come from?

Gatto's conviction that genius is common asks an uncomfortable question: how much ability never receives the conditions in which it could become visible? An early fascination is rarely tidy evidence of future greatness. It may look like a ridiculous amount of attention spent comparing pictures of bridges. But ask why one design uses triangles and another an arch, and the collecting can become an inquiry. Talent, practice, and character begin to matter together when the child wants to make something that their current ability cannot yet produce.

Give that question work to do. The child can build simple models, decide how to compare them, record where each bends, and explain what the comparison actually shows. A model that survives one small load doesn't prove it is a sound design for a real bridge. Learning to say what the test establishes is part of going deeper. The rabbit hole becomes an education when enthusiasm starts acquiring methods, vocabulary, and standards.

Weaknesses matter inside that undertaking. If the child can't describe how a model failed, writing needs attention. If the comparison uses different spans and different loads, the investigation needs a fairer test. We aren't interrupting the interest to repair something unrelated. We are strengthening the abilities that let the learner pursue it honestly. A strong fascination can reveal exactly where a weak foundation is limiting what the child wants to do.

Independent thought requires another discipline: meeting a serious objection. Nietzsche's warning about esteeming those who think alike matters when the child has become attached to a favorite design. Ask them to explain the strongest reason someone might choose another one. Can they understand the tradeoff, or do they simply prefer their own result? Originality isn't refusing to listen. It is being able to reach a judgment you can defend without borrowing it from the people around you.

This is the force of Gatto's question about whether schooling prepares people for great enterprises. Builders become capable by building and judging the result. Scientists learn to distinguish a desired conclusion from evidence. Poets must make language do something worth reading. Instruction belongs inside that effort. Why should a child spend their education rehearsing obedience and wait until afterward to begin the work through which excellence could develop?

Education also needs to ask what the excellence is for. The great novels, biographies, and arguments about how to live are not ornaments we add after the technical work. They expose ambition to other kinds of judgment: what did this person pursue, what did they sacrifice, and what did their success require of others? A child learning to build something formidable should encounter those questions before the only remaining question is whether they can build it. An original mind still has to decide where to direct its powers.

Rand's unborrowed vision can sound romantic until the person with the vision disagrees with us. Then originality becomes considerably less convenient. We have to decide whether we wanted a child capable of independent judgment or a child who would independently arrive at all our preferred conclusions. I want the former, which obliges me to care about their knowledge, their standards, and their willingness to answer an objection. The point of leaving the interesting edges intact is that we do not already know what shape the person will take.