This distinction lies at the heart of our teaching: some things have to be learned, even if one also needs to understand them: for instance the multiplication tables or the rules in grammar, dates in history or monologues in a play. One cannot however – or rather one should not – “learn” evolution for instance. Learning evolution means being able to repeat what the teacher or the book said. For an average child with a normal memory, this is quite easy. And a few months later, he will probably have forgotten most of it.

Learning is easy, understanding is difficult and requires a quite different intellectual attitude. The teacher must admit as a principle that one cannot compel children to understand (whereas one can easily require learning and get it). Understanding must spring spontaneously from the pleasure and desire to understand; the teacher’s work and talent is to nourish this desire. Attaining understanding takes much more time and involves many steps. One has to accept to challenge one’s beliefs; then to examine objects and phenomena with great attention, and to describe them objectively; to develop plausible hypotheses, to support and defend them; to put them up to discussion, to listen to the questions of other children, to defend one’s arguments – or modify then; to search for information which may support or ruin the hypothesis. It is only at the end of this long process that one can check the correctness of one’s understanding, because it will be possible to predict and deduct accurately – and this is the very aim of science.

This process is the foundation of what is required for higher education, and it should be developed and trained, step by step, from the earliest age on. The earlier the start, the more time will be available for the individual development of every child, and the sounder the process will be.