Real education is about the thrill of discovery

Richard Dawkins savages "the stifling effects of exams, and the government obsession with measuring a school's performance by them" in this weekend's Guardian.  By comparison, he relates several stories of F. W. Sanderson, a 19th-century headmaster who, for example, left the doors to the chemistry labs and workshops unlocked so pupils could work on their own projects as they wished.

Needless to say, this led to a few, er, accidents, and eventually Sanderson was forced to lock the rooms again.  But he had established such a culture of enquiry and action that disappointed pupils just started studying locks instead.  "We made skeleton keys for all Oundle... For weeks we used the laboratories and workshops as we had grown accustomed to use them, but now with a keen care of the expensive apparatus and with precautions to leave nothing disorderly to betray our visits.  It seemed that the head saw nothing; he had a great gift for assuming blindness -- until Speech Day came round, and then we were amazed to hear him, as he beamed upon the assembled parents, telling them the whole business, 'And what do you think my boys have been doing now?'"

It seems the Hacker Ethic goes back further than we thought.