When I was in school there was no internet and it wasn't easy for me to get to a library. There was no way for me to learn anything beyond what the school taught. Kids today are so lucky to have easy access to all this information.
I love learning this way right along with my son. He and I enjoy a lot of the same things. He says that he thinks he can learn just about anything by reading on his own and that he doesn't really need a teacher.
I love watching educational channels with him with the laptop nearby so we can look up more information when the show is over. He finds his newest "obsession" usually by wanting to know more about something that he saw on the science or history channels or it could be something that is happening in the news and he wants to know more about the events leading up to it.
He has had some interests that bordered on obsession that have been constant--vocabulary (he has always been a word nerd), history and current events.
My husband sometimes comes home from work and asks our son questions that our son knows the answer to but young college graduates who work in his office do not. When my son talks to his adult sister about things we think she would certainly have learned in school we find that she doesn't know what he is talking about and these are things that I remember learning in school. I am surprised at the number of people I see who don't see learning as something fun and once they get out of school they don't read or even care what is happening in the rest of the world.
