Expostulation and Reply

(A poem about leisure) William Wordsworth, 1798

I’ve often said that children should be given as much free time outdoors as possible, to work or to play or simply to be, because if all their time is taken up in school, when will they have the time to learn anything?  Yes, I know that that sounds like a facetious thing to say, but the poet Wordsworth would have nodded and laughed, and said, “Exa…