One is never too old to learn. Life learning (sometimes called un-schooling or self-directed learning) is one of those concepts that are almost easier to explain by saying what it isn't than what it is. And that's probably because our own schooled backgrounds have convinced(说服) us that learning happens only in a fine building on certain days, between certain hours, and managed by a specially trained professional.

Within that schooling framestudy, no matter how hard teachers try and no matter how good their textbooks, many bright students get bored, many slower students struggle and give up or lose their self-respect, and most of them reach the end of the process unprepared to enter into society. They have memorized a certain body of knowledge long enough to rush back the information on tests, but they haven't really learnt much, at least of the official curriculum.

Life learners, on the other hand, know that learning is not difficult, that people learn things quite easily if they're not compelled and forced, if they see a need to learn something, and if they are trusted and respected enough to learn it on their own timetable, at their own speed, in their own way—no matter what age and no matter whether we're at school or at home.

Life learning is independent of time, location or the presence of teacher. It does not require mom or dad to teach, or kids to work in workbooks at the table from 9 to noon. Life learning is learner-driven. It involves living and learning—in and from the real world. It is about exploring, questioning, experimenting, making messes, taking risks without fear of making mistakes, being laughed at and trying again.

Furthermore, life learning is about trusting kids to learn what they need to know and about helping them to learn and grow in their own ways. It is about providing positive experiences that enable children to understand the world and their culture and to interact with it.

Students should be able to show what they know. Many folks take this as a self-evident truth. But I think it demands closer examination.

Possessing a skill or piece of knowledge is not the same thing as being able to show it. This is why many smart young people hate school. Understanding, figuring out, and getting a handle on a piece of knowledge is really exciting, but having to prove to somebody else that you understand is a big fat pain in the neck.

Finding proof of student learning is a huge part of the teacher's job, and whether it is done poorly or not makes all the difference in that teacher's effectiveness. There is a huge difference between “How do I figure out if this student understands” and “How do I make this student prove to me he gets it.” The first is a valuable approach; the second is the first step on the road toward wasting everybody's time.

And there's the problem. If we start with the assumption（假定）that a student who knows must be able to show his knowledge to our satisfaction, we will be traveling down the wrong road. The more we demand that students prove to us that they know the stuff, the more we will design artificial tasks that demand a set of skills and knowledge entirely different from the skills and knowledge we really want to measure.

As a classroom teacher, I have to remember that the burden is on me to find a way to see what my students know; the burden is not on them to put on whatever trained monkey show I design for my own ease and convenience.

It may not be the worst thing ever to say “Students should be able to show what they know.” But I think it's far more useful to say, “Teachers should be able to discover what students know.”