Kids should learn to think • Hacker News Board

Post by InclinedPlane » Sun, Mar 03, 2013, 9:16 PM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #8

In my mind, in addition to teaching fundamental skills like reading and writing, the purpose of K-12 school is to expose kids to a bunch of different subjects so that hopefully they'll find something they're passionate about. So yeah, every kid should ( try to ) learn to draw and code and everything else we can reasonably expose them to.

If only it worked that way. I think in practice it works by exposing kids to a significant amount of drudgery and pain associated with a bunch of different subjects to cause kids to pretty much hate learning in general. It's a wonder that anyone manages to survive K-12 education with any degree of passion for learning intact.

P.S. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2112

P.P.S. From a lot of different people I've heard the same story of having a hard time re-engaging in learning and especially reading after coming out of formal education. A lot of people have an aversion to the books and authors they studied in school, and often to reading in general. It seems to typically take several years for people to (re)develop an individual passion for reading and to be open to reading those authors again, though some people seem to never get past that aversion.