"When kids are allowed to read when they want to,
when they find it meaningful for them, when their brains
are developmentally ready, when they have pleasant
associations with reading then kids do learn to read."
-Joyce Fetteroll

Parents worry. It's part of being responsible for the safety of another human life. And many of us worry about the future -- not only our own, but our childrens'. And it is that responsibility and that future outcome that leads us to worrying about the education our kids receive.

The first thing we need to remember is that it isn't our responsibility to teach them -- it's their responsibility to learn. People will gather information from everything in their enviroment -- their peers, television, books, documentary films, politicians, clergy, educators, and their parents. Everything their senses can grab ahold of will find a place in their minds, as positive experiences or bad counter-examples. We can try to shelter them, but eventually they will find it on their own once they are out of our control. And we can innundate them with knowledge, but as the saying goes "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Or a more humorous version "Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he’s not interested it’s like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating."

So now that we recognize where the responsibility for learning lies, our worry turns to whether or not they WILL learn it. Others have argued that point better than I have, but I'd just make three points:

1. Do they NEED to learn it? I mean, how often have YOU used trigonometry today? Is your life in shambles if you can't accurately state the stages of cell mitosis in chronological order? Before you say "I am going to the store" do you honestly tell yourself "AM is a modal auxiliary verb"? I'm not saying these are bad things -- I think we as a culture would be much better off if we knew all that, but you can't force it. I personally LOVE trig, biology and grammar, but I didn't always, which leads to...

2. Do they need to learn it NOW? Did you suddenly stop learning once you turned 18, or when you left high school or college? For most of us, the internet didn't even exist when we were in school, and look at how that has changed the world. This isn't the post-war company store age anymore. The average person today can be expected to change careers -- not jobs, but CAREERS, three to five (and in some reports, as many as eight) times in their life. That means they will CONSTANTLY need to be retraining themselves. I hated math in school, but I was pretty good at it. It wasn't until many years later, when I discovered a NEED for trigonometry, did I come to love the precision of it. And did I dredge up my old lessons from school, buried deep in my mind? Heck no -- I got on the net, googled for "trigonometry 101" and read up on it. I STILL can't quote a calculation to you off-hand, but I know what I need and where to find it. I was lucky -- most people grow up HATING math, and as a result, they never learn anything more advanced than counting change or balancing a checkbook (and lots can't do that now, either). The reason for that is because they're forced into it before they are ready (more on that on an upcoming comic). So why do we force kids to learn things all by a certain, predefined age?

3. How can they AVOID learning it? If something is so essential that everyone needs to learn it, that must mean modern daily life requires it for our survival. If a kid is active in that life -- going to the bank, the store, the library -- they must be SWIMMING in the knowledge. If reading and math are part of everything we do, then there is no need to "teach" it - everything they see and do will REQUIRE it. Even video games nowadays have stories and scores, dialogue and shopping budgets, magazine reviews and maps to navigate, box descriptions and price tags.

So how is it, in a world where reading and math are lurking around every corner, are there those who, as educated adults, are unable to read or do simple arithmetic? I think it's important to consider that, in our worry about their future and our responsiblity in it, the traditional methods of forced education may be exactly what is CAUSING those problems.

Personally, I'd rather see more scientists and engineers advertising their careers to kids, rather than forcing them to learn what they learned. If you can make the end result (a career involving advanced learning) exciting, kids will go after the knowledge on their own to achieve the prize. If you want a kid to learn something, give them a reason WHY they should learn it. But in the end, it's still up to them to make the choice.