As we help children get out into the world to do their learning well, we can get more of the world into the schools. Aside from their parents, most children never have any close contact with any adults except their teachers. No wonder they have no idea what adult life or work is like. We need to bring more people who are not full-time teachers into the schools. In New York City, under the teachers' and writers' collaborative, real writers come into the schools, read their work, and talk to the children about the problems of their craft. The children love it. In another school, a practicing attorney comes in every month and talks to several classes about the law. Not the law it is in books, but the law as he sees it and encounters it in his cases. And the children listen with intense interest. Here's something even easier: let children work together, help each other, learn from each other and each other's mistakes. We now know from this experience of many schools that children are often the best teachers of other children. What's more important, we know that when the fifth floor six-grader who is being having trouble with reading, starts helping a first-grader, his own reading sharply improves. A number of schools are beginning to use what some call paired learning. This means that you let children form partnerships with other children. Do their work even including their tests together and share whatever marks or results this work gets. Just like grown-ups in the real world. It seems to work.
Questions 23 to 25 are based on the passage you've just heard.
23: Why does the speaker say most children have no idea what adult life is like?
24: What is happening in New York City schools?
25: What does the experience of many schools show?