Similarly, computer literacy courses tend to produce computer people who know a lot about computers or a piece of software but they don't help people become fluent with the machine.

Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization...I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities.

This frenzy about cyberporn indicates some deeper fear of adults as they see kids become more independent and learn things they never learned. I think those fears also reflect a failure to communicate. Parents should be able to say to their kids: "There is stuff out there that we don't look at, and if you find yourself looking at it or someone approaching you about it, then let's talk about it."

For what is important when we give children a theorem to use is not that they should memorize it. What matters most is that by growing up with a few very powerful theorems one comes to appreciate how certain ideas can be used as tools to think with over a lifetime. One learns to enjoy and to respect the power of powerful ideas. One learns that the most powerful idea of all is the idea of powerful ideas.

What the gears cannot do the computer might. The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate

The goal is to teach in such a way as to produce the most learning from the least teaching.

Rather than pushing children to think like adults, we might do better to remember that they are great learners and to try harder to be more like them.