New Delhi, Aug. 18 -- "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time." - Rabindranath Tagore

Every generation of adults makes the same quiet error. They look at the children in front of them and see students to be filled. They reach for what they know and pour it forward. They mistake transmission for education. This sentence stops that error cold.

It does not argue against teaching. It argues against a specific kind of teaching. The kind that mistakes the map of one person's experience for the entire territory of the future.

The quote contains two distinct claims. Each one earns an examination on its own.

The first claim is in the instruction: do not limit a child to your own learning. The word "limit" is...