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The whole idea is to free children to follow their curiosity through a rich variety of gamelike experiments. Math is encouraged, for example, with a real stove in which young children can bake cakes, carefully measuring the ingredients while a teacher explains concepts like ounces and pounds. Reading and writing occur almost painlessly as the children follow instruction cards for science experiments, and then record the results in their notebooks.
"How do the children get any work accomplished if they do nothing but play all day?" one U.S. principal asked. Silberman points out that well beyond first grade "play is a child's work"—an insight that draws, as does the entire informal approach, on the experience of Italian Educator Maria Montessori and the research of Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget. Though academic structure is outwardly minimal in such informal schooling, says Silberman, it becomes apparent to children as they explore the books and materials that knowing adults select for them. Moreover, teachers freed from lockstep group discipline can observe individual children more carefully, prodding them to move beyond easy materials and stick with difficult ones.
To date, Britain's informally educated children have scored as well on most standard tests as those in traditional classrooms. Best of all, says Silberman, eager kids begin to show up for school early—and instead of running wild, they avoid many of the discipline problems that can drain up to 75% of a teacher's time. One of Silberman's most interesting discoveries is that techniques similar to the British approach have been spreading quietly in U.S. public schools. In the past three years, varieties of it have worked well in at least 28 school districts in North Dakota, the first six grades in Tucson, Ariz., "learning centers" in nine Philadelphia schools, and nearly 40 poverty-area classrooms in New York City.
To anyone over 40, informal education strongly resembles John Dewey's ideas—the "progressive" education that excited Americans in the 1920s and angered them in the 1950s. The trouble with progressivism, Silberman admits, was that too often it degenerated into shoddiness, partly because few teachers were properly trained to carry it out. For that reason, Silberman joins a host of previous school critics in urging a drastic upgrading in the training of U.S. teachers.
Beyond all that, Silberman's admirable ideas for reform collide with current national frustration at the increasing cost of schools and the decreasing discipline in classrooms. According to a recent Gallup poll, most U.S. adults think that their community's schools are not strict enough—and that curriculums need no substantial change. Nonetheless, Silberman's vivid examples of educational failings and his catalogue of existing alternatives will help produce pockets of progress and serve as a powerful agenda for those who still believe that the rest of the nation's schools can and must improve.