Some theorists view children as passive receivers of experience; others consider them 【B1】 in organizing, structuring, and in some 【B2】 . creating their worlds. A scientist who considers children to be passive does not think they are unresponsive, just that they enter the world ready to absorb 【B3】 knowledge is provided by the environment. According to this view, children are 【B4】 by stimuli in the external environment and driven by 【B5】 needs over which they have little control. Theorists and educators who view the child as 【B6】 passive often 【B7】 direct and carefully structured teaching methods. For example, some methods for teaching children to play the piano contain a 【B8】 of specific steps, chords, and tunes to be learned in a 【B9】 order. The child must master each step 【B10】 proceeding to the next one.
【B11】 an educator who believes that children are active assumes that they learn best when they 【B12】 and select their own learning materials and tasks. When teaching a child to play the piano, such an instructor might 【B13】 the child to make up tunes or to select among different exercises. Human beings are 【B14】 to have an inborn tendency to be curious, to explore their environment, and to organize the 【B15】 experience in their own mental frameworks. Efforts to program learning too 【B16】 are likely to fail because they may not 【B17】 to the child’’s interest. Instead, a relatively 【B18】 situation that offers opportunities for varied stimulation and exploration is optimal. What the child does and learns, then, 【B19】 mainly on interest that comes from 【B20】 and on his or her level of understanding.