And curiosity is the greatest of all drives. I've spent more hours than I can count following curiosity with no other prize but knowledge. Instead, we've come to tell kids that they should memorise this thing for the next week, and move on.
For a given concept, with three layers of abstraction, if we start bottom-up, with the downmost layer, the kid doesn't know what that layer's good for. That happens until we get to the topmost layer. The layers have no purpose until we've finished 4 months from now. They don't make sense.
If you teach kids backwards, once the kid knows the topmost layer, he/she will know what the next layer is good for and in what conditions shall it exist. The _next layer_ has a purpose, which the kid can understand and expect.
The Socratic method works this way. You start with the general purpose of the system, and then you break it down question by question.
(teacher)- What is this?
(student)+ This is a car.
- What is a car good for?
+ It moves people.
- How does it move people?
+ Because it moves these wheels.
- How does it move those wheels?
+ Because... I don't know (takes a car replica), it has these bar connected to those wheels, and this other bar connected to that bar.
- What happens when you spin that second bar?
+ The wheels move.
- So to move the car, you move those wheels, and to move those wheels you spin this bar, but you don't manually spin this bar when you are driving, who does so then?
+ I don't know.
Now the kid is ready to understand what an engine is.
If we did it backwards, and started with combustion, the kid would have no idea what combustion is for until we've reached the car.