Other Blogs I've Read

I've been checking out other education blogs lately. One of them is called Eduwonk. One of its recent guest bloggers was none other than the current Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings. I was not surprised by her article. I heard her speak in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives last year, and came away with one thing very clear: She believes very much in the current "assembly line" system of education, and that No Child Left Behind will eventually live up to its name.

Yet, I couldn't help thinking that we've taken something that, at its core, is really very simple (though not, by any means, easy), and made it very complicated. So complicated that, now, we are turning to state of the art technology to save us or, as other bloggers are starting to suggest (like here and here), that we simply give in and simply pay cash directly to children to sit down and listen to us.

Every child is born wanting to know. And every child is born with a sense of amazement at the world around them. The real question that we have to ask ourselves is, "Why are sixteen year olds not more amazed by the world around them than six year olds, and is it something we're doing to them that is killing that wild-eyed-wonder?"