Curious
This part of an Aaron Schwartz interview was already mentioned by Dave Winer and John Gruber, but this SO gets to the essence of what I think is broken with schools (and universities!), that I’ll repeat it here:
“When I was a kid, I thought a lot about what made me different from the other kids. I don’t think I was smarter than them and I certainly wasn’t more talented. And I definitely can’t claim I was a harder worker – I’ve never worked particularly hard, I’ve always just tried doing things I find fun. Instead, what I concluded was that I was more curious — but not because I had been born that way. If you watch little kids, they are intensely curious, always exploring and trying to figure out how things work. The problem is that school drives all that curiosity out. Instead of letting you explore things for yourself, it tells you that you have to read these particular books and answer these particular questions. And if you try to do something else instead, you’ll get in trouble. Very few people’s curiosity can survive that. But, due to some accident, mine did. I kept being curious and just followed my curiosity.”
Hear, hear! I heartily agree, curiosity is the THING. And anything that can be done to preserve or boost it is getting us way further ahead than any attempt to teach to numerical “standards” as is the current US fashion.