[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.