The focus of most schools is to pass on a body of knowledge. Our belief (and research supports this) is that learning a body of knowledge is not useful. Human knowledge is advancing at such a rapid rate that knowledge learned at the age of ten is no longer useful at the age of twenty. Additionally, schools and textbooks are always behind the knowledge curve. This is a polite way of saying that some information taught in schools is simply incorrect. So, some information taught in schools is wrong, some is missing and that which is taught will be obsolete by the time students begin to apply knowledge in their adult lives.

At the Twin Oaks school we teach, rather, is the process of where to find knowledge. We teach how to find information in libraries, over the internet and how to find people who have information. Our goal is to have students fully comfortable seeking information that they don't know.

Due to class size (we suspect) a focus of many most mainstream schools is having students of the same age do the same work at the same time. This leaves the gifted being bored, the slow struggling (and feeling stupid) and the exceptional feeling out of place.

At the Twin Oaks school we encourage each student to understand the ways in which they are unique. We strive to tap the areas where students (and teachers) are passionate and have the school follow that students' passions. Our experience is that children and all people learn at a very rapid rate when they are pursuing information that they are passionately interested in. In this way we aren't teaching the students, but more, encouraging their self learning.

The low teacher to student ratio, of course, makes a huge difference in the quality of interaction and the possibilities for learning. Very little of the teachers or students time is wasted on maintaining order and discipline, which consumes huge amounts of students education in the mainstream education, so much time that some people feel that the curriculum of mainstream education can be more accurately described as "order and discipline" rather than "a body of knowledge".