People all over the world write to me asking how to best prepare a young adult to do well on their pre-entrance exams for university. Contemporary education has convinced us that real learning involves primarily studying to a test, covering only certain subjects, and focusing on right answers in textbooks and precollege tests. By age seventeen, many teens are disinterested in learning.

True education is beyond tests, grades, and standardized measurement. Perhaps teens are bored in high school because sometimes it is boring and pedantic in nature, perhaps requiring little of their ability to engage, to think, to explore ideas and philosophy.

Yet, learning how to think, to understand the rise and fall of civilizations, the reflection of a culture’s history through its art and culture, develops deeply intellectual people. When we submerge ourselves in vastly important thought life, the natural consequence is that test taking is accomplished more easily. If a child is not raised to think and dive into the context of a culture and understand peoples and philosophy from the beginning, it will be hard to develop that muscle later on.

Read more about this in Awaking Wonder.