John Holt, educator and pioneer of the youth rights movement, famously said: “Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever must be learned.” This is another way to understand, more globally, the aim of an emergent curriculum; it is learning with intention and relevance.  Sabot students are given space to uncover - through trial and error - their own conclusions, ensuring deeper understanding and joy in learning.

In 4th grade, after class-wide estimation and theorizing, one student, who had been quietly pondering, suggested that it was possible, with the right conditions, to be able to know precisely how many objects were in a jar. He hypothesized that with square cubes in a rectangular jar, one could use the layer method to find the exact number of objects. Without realizing what, by name, he was learning, he discovered for himself the formula for the volume of a rectangular prism.

Similarly, in Kindergarten, teachers could have explained at the outset that counting by tens is the most efficient way to count large numbers of objects. But efficiency is not necessarily the aim of learning. In fact, as Jean Piaget remarked, “Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely.” Instead, Kindergarten students exhausted several more cumbersome strategies for counting only to discover, first-hand and with joyful recognition, an important mathematical concept that will remain relevant throughout their lives.