[tshaddox]

Why is it obvious to you that children should be coerced into learning something?

Let's say that you have some curriculum C that you think is vital for children to learn, and you want as many children as possible to learn C.

Even ignoring ethics, it's not obvious to me that attempting to coerce all children into learning C is the best way to accomplish your goal!

[FloorEgg]

I'm not the parent comment author, but my guess is that they probably meant persuade or inspire as much if not more than coerce. Most respectful interpretation and all...

Why is it obvious that an educator should do their best to teach a student something even when they don't want to learn? Well for one, it's their job, and two... Children especially are not good judges of which knowledge and skills will benefit them later in life.

[WalterBright]

> Children especially are not good judges of which knowledge and skills will benefit them later in life.

This. If children knew what was best for them, they wouldn't need teachers or parents.

When I was in college, the courses were laid out for particular majors. Electives were few. I trusted the college that they knew what they were doing in deciding the curricula, because I sure didn't.

[tshaddox]

I'm sorry if I was uncharitable. That certainly was not my intention. The only usage of "coerce" I'm aware of is in direct opposition to "persuade" or "inspire," and I'm not aware of any serious debate about whether children should be persuaded/inspired/encouraged to learn things.

[FloorEgg]

> I'm not aware of any serious debate about whether children should be persuaded/inspired/encouraged to learn things.

Kind of an odd thing to say given decades of pedagogy research in this debate exactly. Maybe you are just entirely uninformed about this topic?

E.g. self-directed education, self-determination theory, zone of proximal development, cognitive load theory...

Are you saying that you don't think educators should try and teach students when they don't want to learn?

Or that educators shouldn't try to get students to want to learn when they don't?

[tshaddox]

I have only a surface level awareness of those topics. I would be very surprised if there are notable proponents of the idea that parents/adults should never attempt to encourage children to learn things.

I’ve seen some stuff bordering on this idea from the self-directed education folks, but even the most radical proponents I’ve seen are saying stuff like “try to leave interesting materials about topic X around the house, rather than always asking your child if they want to learn about topic X.” And even that is more about which methods to use to inspire a child to learn.

[Etheryte]

In broad strokes, learning leads to better life outcomes just like brushing your teeth leads to better health outcomes, or any other example you may prefer. Brushing teeth is a chore so a child won't generally pick it up all by themselves without some nudging. If you don't do the nudging you're essentially letting a child be free, yes, but also willingly letting them end up worse off when they're too young to know any better. Learning is the same.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> just like brushing your teeth leads to better health outcomes

This is very context dependent. If you grow up surrounded by a typical western/industrial/post-industrial diet, then yes, it almost certainly does.

But you could also change the food environment.

Hopefully the analogy/metaphor that connects this to schooling is reasonably obvious.

[Etheryte]

I don't think this argument is logically sound. Your eating habits are something that you personally have fairly high control over and can change with reasonable ease/effort. Society at large does not have the same characteristics and unless you have the means to live outside of society, you do have to deal with its realities.

[fooo1882992]

So... We need to go back to living in the jungle?

You go do that then. Enjoy your slow death from malaria.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Where did I say anything about living in the jungle?

The food choices having nothing to do with the jungle, but rather: regular, significant consumption of highly processed and most significantly sweetened foods. There were plenty of people in the world before the widespread adoption of sugar as cooking ingredient whose dental health would likely not have been improved by brushing, and they didn't live in "the jungle" but places like ... America, and Japan, and India and ... basically the entire planet.

[abdullahkhalids]

Forget children. I regularly coerce adults - junior members of my team - to learn properly things they don't care to learn too much. Both for the benefit of the organization (society in the case of children) and for their own benefit.