"Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals." - Janusz Korczak.

This winter, my youngest son was studying time in school. The kids were told about calendar and time units. During an evening conversation at the table, I asked him why there are 60 seconds in a minute. "Err.",. answered he," It is a law of nature!".Hearing that, I had no other choice than to discuss time at our next math circle meetings ( 6-9 year olds).

Here are some questions that kids were interested about:

On time itself:

• What is time?
• Can you get hold of time?
• Does time exist in reality or only in our mind? (like numbers)
• If the space was completely empty, would there be time?
• If there were no life, would there be no time?
• Does time happen even on the dead planets, rotating around dead suns?
• Is there a smallest particle of time?
• What is “present time”? How is it different from the past and future? Does it have any duration?
• Is time internal or external?
• Do humans have an internal clock? Do plants have an internal clock? 
• Is time different in different points in space?

On time measurement:

• How did people start to notice time?
• Do people in all cultures know their own age?
• Do people in all cultures count time in days and years?
• Why do we use the same clocks for summer and winter?  (In 13^th century, Russians used different clocks for summer and winter. Summer clock face had 17 hours.- my comment)
• Do all people think that there are 24 hours a day?
• Why do people use different calendars?
• If you lived on Mars, how would your calendar differ from Earth calendar? How would you count months?
• Does time flow differently for different people? Why?

We have also discussed different calendars ( no, this year is not only 2012 - it is also   4710 in Chinese calendar,  1433 in Muslim calendar,  5111 in Hindu calendar,  5772 in Jewish calendar.) and calculated what year it would be if we would count time from the date of birth of each student of math circle.

As one can see, the questions discussed are very profound. They are also the questions that move student to think deeply and to continue questioning the world. 

It is both sad and unbelievable, that we do not let children to discuss these type of questions, when they are young and eager to learn - and feed them disconnected chunks of facts instead. 

Imagine a boy who wants to learn about robots - and instead of telling him of an amazing and complex mechanism that drives the thing, we start teaching him about bolts, bolts of different sizes and materials, bolts and more bolts, promising him that after five years of learning all about bolts, he will graduate to learn about simple gears. 

It is rare that we are fascinated by simple things - we are much more prone to be interested in complex, interconnected systems. Why not start by discussing big, global things and supply the little things - tools, skills, etc as the need arises organically?