Part 11 of 29 in Helping Your Children Learn: What Parents Need to Know← Part 10Part 12 →
I remember a conversation I had with a young parent not too long ago. She was exasperated, almost defeated, by the relentless demands of school assignments, extracurricular activities, and the pressure to ensure her child was “keeping up.” It struck me how much of our children’s learning is dictated by a rigid syllabus — a checklist of what someone else has decided is essential. But here’s the thing: real learning doesn’t follow a syllabus. Real learning happens in the unstructured, unplanned moments, the ones that can’t be captured in a neatly formatted worksheet or a multiple-choice test.
I’ve always believed that children learn best with things, not just through things. The late John Holt, an advocate for unschooling, often spoke about the power of letting children explore with materials that adults hadn’t planned for. His classrooms — and the homes he admired — were filled with resources that children could use as they saw fit. The planning was left up to the child, not the adult. This is a principle that might feel awkward in a small Indian flat, but it remains the right one.
You don’t need a fancy Montessori catalogue to foster curiosity. You need objects that answer back. A mug, a tape measure, a simple clock — these are tools through which children can make sense of their world. Measurement turns the world into something arguable, a landscape to explore and question.
In our home, we’ve embraced this philosophy wholeheartedly. I remember the day we dedicated a corner of our living room as a “work in progress” area. It’s a place where unfinished projects can sit, undisturbed by the rush of daily life. If everything has to be cleared away for dinner, after all, how can long work ever truly start? The corner has become a haven for creativity — a space where ideas can percolate without the pressure of immediate completion.
The refusal to adhere strictly to a syllabus matters as much as the materials we supply. When you hand your child a tape measure, resist the urge to also hand them ten things to measure and a table to fill. That table is the syllabus creeping back in, the checklist that stifles creativity. Leave the tape measure. Let them find their own questions, their own paths.
I think back to Arjun, a thirteen-year-old from Lucknow. He once opened the ceiling-fan regulator because he did not trust the knob. His father, understandably concerned about safety, shouted. But it was Arjun’s grandfather who did the companion’s job. He cut the mains and stood by, allowing Arjun to explore. They didn’t turn the experience into a lesson on resistance; they simply tried to put it back together. It worked on the second evening. Arjun learned something about circuits and paths, something a tuition class might later frame with Ohm’s law. But he will have a real-world context for it.
Safety, too, is a material. Goggles, a dry hand, and a vigilant adult — these are supplies, not syllabi. They are the tools that allow children to explore safely, to ask questions without confiscating their curiosity.
As a parent and educator, I often sit with the question: What material can I put within reach this week, without an attached worksheet? It’s a question that challenges us to think beyond the prescribed, to trust in the child’s innate ability to learn from the world around them.
In my journey as an angel investor, I’ve seen a similar principle at play. Founders who thrive are often those who aren’t bound by a rigid business plan. They are the ones who see opportunity in the unplanned, who leverage resources in unexpected ways. Much like children, they learn by doing, by experimenting, by failing and trying again.
The connection between how we educate our children and how we nurture startups is striking. Both require a refusal to be boxed in by the preset paths. Both demand a willingness to supply materials, yet refuse the syllabus.
I urge you to consider what “materials” might be within your reach. Perhaps it’s allowing your child to dismantle an old clock to see how the gears work, or maybe it’s letting them use the kitchen scale to weigh out ingredients for a recipe they want to try. Whatever it is, let it be something that encourages exploration without a predetermined outcome.
I realize this approach is not always easy, especially in a society that values structured achievements and standardized tests. But as someone who has spent years in both the education and investment arenas, I can assure you that the rewards of unstructured exploration are profound.
For those who, like the parent I spoke to, feel overwhelmed by the demands of modern education, I say this: trust yourself. Trust your child’s curiosity and capability. Encourage them to ask questions, to explore, to make mistakes. And in doing so, we will be nurturing not just learners, but thinkers and doers who are prepared for the complexities of the world.
So, what will you put within reach this week? What will you refuse to dictate? It’s a question worth sitting with, and the answers might just surprise you.