"When he moved from Germany to Switzerland at the age of sixteen, Einstein spent a year at a school that emphasized independent thought, free action and personal responsibility. He thrived in a learning environment without rote drills, memorization and force-fed facts.
Based on the philosophy of a Swiss educator named Pestalozzi, the school helped students move through a series of steps from hands-on observations to intuition, conceptualization, imagination and visual imagery.
“Visual understanding is the essential and only true means of teaching how to judge things correctly,” wrote Pestaslozzi, and “the learning of numbers and language must be definitely subordinated"
...It was at this school that Einstein, age sixteen, started picturing what it would be like to ride along a beam of light.”
http://sparkmygenius.com/2007/07/myth-busted-einstein-on-edu...