To teach children well, a teacher needs to be deeply educated, so that she or he can take the children wherever they want or need in the course of learning, straying away from the shallow scope and narrow confines of a prescribed curriculum. I paraphrase Steve Nelson, who speaks for himself more effectively here.

Steve is head teacher at The Calhoun School in New York. Or, as he described himself at the educational conference at which I met him, the “head lover of children”.

But I digress. Steve’s column in the Huffington Post is worth following. He is a quietly spoken, elderly wise man. One of more relevance to today’s children than Caspar, Melchior or Balthasar.