A few days ago, on our nightly walk, my husband and I passed a couple of kids out after dark. They were fossicking around in the water race and had just caught an eel (barehanded!). We watched as the hapless fish wriggled in their hands before they released it back into the water. The kids’ excitement was as wriggly and sparkling as the eel.

We congratulated them on their catch and carried on with our walk, leaving them to their watery exploration.

And I couldn’t help smiling, thrilled that two kids were eeling after dark on a school night. I have no doubt they learned more in that 30-second encounter with an eel than they had all day at school.

Don’t get me wrong—school is important. But mucking around in the natural world, without adult supervision, is where lifelong passions germinate, where lasting learning takes place.

School simply can’t provide that. Thirty kids (or more) in a room with a responsible adult who’s being judged on how orderly the classroom is and how many reading levels the students have progressed is not a place experiential learning can thrive.

I know. I tried. I was lucky to have a little more leeway than a regular classroom teacher, but the constraints were insurmountable. I was still there—a sensible adult who was responsible for messes and injuries when they occurred. I was an impediment to the sort of wild learning I hoped to inspire.

And the tragic part is that school shouldn’t have to be the place where kids get experiences, but I was fully aware my students weren’t getting those experiences outside of school, where my generation got them.

No matter how hard I tried, in the confines of a classroom, with the need for accountability, safety, and justification, I could not make up for my students’ lack of solo ‘adventuring’.

So I was thrilled to see at least two kids bucking the trend, up to their knees in a stream with eel slime dripping off their fingers. And kudos to the parents who let them explore!