When my son Bobby was 2 years old, he had a set of eight small “nesting” boxes that varied in size so that one would fit within another in a serial order from small to large. The boxes could be “nested” or placed upside-down largest first, next largest next, and so on until each was stacked upon the other to make a tower. Making a tower is an extremely dif- ficult task for a 2-year-old. When we played with the boxes I normally built the tower so he could see the result. Then Bobby would knock the tower down, grab the boxes, and attempt to build it himself. Typically, he would first pick the largest box and perhaps the next largest. However, if left to his own devices, he would err long before completing the tower. He appeared to recognize the correct solution, but he lacked the ability to arrive at it by him- self. It was an assumption on my part that he actually was attempting to build the entire tower. His actual motives may have in fact been quite different. Nevertheless his sponta- neous effort went on and on. One day, while he was playing with the boxes, I decided to find out if a concerted effort at teaching him the correct way to build the tower would be successful. When he first grabbed the largest box I let him continue, but instead of letting him proceed when he grabbed an incorrect box, I intervened. “No, Bobby, that’s not the correct box. This is the correct one.” And so on. I continued this intervention for about 10 minutes until we worked out a successful technique to unerringly build the tower. He would grab a box and then look at me for approval or disapproval. If I approved he would add it to the first. If I disapproved he would grab another box and so on until together we got the tower built. Unfortunately such a prescription had two rather serious side effects. First, it eliminated all of his spontaneous effort to build the tower. He would not add a box without looking to me for approval. His behavior had changed from spontaneous to dependent in the course of only a few minutes. And second, without me for continual guidance he was not able to build the tower again. Seeing my own child transformed from a curious, ambitious, and energetic builder to a dependent, cautious seeker of approval taught me not to try my heavy-handed teaching methods again. In short, if adults usurp children’s spontaneous and self-directed learning by imposing external procedures or by answering unasked questions, they may be able to solve problems by rote or by parroting words, but they will neither be able to solve novel problems nor be able to understand how those empty words relate to the world they know. The key educa- tional issue raised by this discussion is clearly one of active, spontaneous, self-directed learn- ing versus passive, outer-directed, “reception” learning. Active, spontaneous, self-directed learning is essential if both the development of reasoning skills and meaningful concept acquisition are aims. Unfortunately, the heavy-handed, outer-directed teaching approach is taken far too often in today’s elementary and secondary schools. Small wonder so many students arrive at college with only one question on their minds: “What will be on the test?”