Give them the internet and a problem to get to the bottom of - then back off unless they have a question. And if they're not interested in your task, give them

Give them the internet and a problem to get to the bottom of - then back off unless they have a question. And if they're not interested in your task, give them some other problem to investigate. Just because one child doesn't care about writing a Freedom of Information request to a public authority (even if it's to ask how much their teacher gets paid, their MP spends on expenses, time coppers spend filling in forms, times the local power station has been reported for environmental infractions, or whatever) then find something else they would - maybe it's looking up new techniques for computer graphics - introduce them to modelling and show them how maths plays a role in that. Or show kids the stock market. Get them to read up about how rich people avoid paying taxes. Whatever. Just make them feel confident, once they find a direction. Don't forget to round them out, and teach them to be balanced, skeptical and sustainable. Teach them to make parallels between systems - e.g. a balanced ecosystem is resilient to change and challenge, so too is a balanced education, a balanced portfolio, a balanced diet, a balanced peer group, and a balanced political sphere. The idea that we can ram 'knowledge' down young throats through rote learning, and get anything useful out of the end product, is NONSENSE.