I know a lot of people who believe this, and I think it just doesn't bear out.

I am 4. I have many interests. I would love to read books about those interests, but in order to do this, I have to do phonics drills and practice sounding out words. But I am 4, and I do not have the cognitive skills to force myself to do unpleasant practice to acquire a skill which I will some day cherish. I must be made to learn.

I am 14. I have many interests. I would love to have a career revolving around those interests, but in order to do this, I have to acquire various basic skills and distinguish myself. But I am 14, etc.

Kids aren't just a blob of flesh that will some day become an adult. People don't take them seriously as individuals, but they should. That said, if left to their own devices, they simply will not do what is best for them. You have to make them do stuff sometimes, including learning.

> I am 4. I have many interests. I would love to read books about those interests, but in order to do this, I have to do phonics drills and practice sounding out words. But I am 4, and I do not have the cognitive skills to force myself to do unpleasant practice to acquire a skill which I will some day cherish. I must be made to learn.

Maybe we shouldn't be forcing people to do drills and practice at a time when they lack the cognitive skills to force themselves to do drills and practice, and we most certainly shouldn't be penalizing those who struggle with such a regimen. We live in a marvelous age where you can learn about things through a wide range of media which do not require any one particular gating skill. So long as children are engaged, eventually they're going to reach a point where there are so many things they want to read that the effort to read is no longer daunting. If well structured, they'll find that in their previous learning they've actually already picked up quite a bit of understanding that helps them.

The very worst thing you can do to a child is try to shove them through a process that was not designed for them, pressure them to succeed where they were set up to fail, then tell them the failure is due to a lack of effort on their part.

The work is in setting up education programs where interest in cultivated and challenges are calibrated to the level of a student's abilities such that what they want to learn and what they need to learn are aligned. This is not easy, but life does not guarantee there is an easy way to do everything. Children are not the only ones who must learn the value of putting in the effort to reap a bountiful reward.

> That said, if left to their own devices, they simply will not do what is best for them. You have to make them do stuff sometimes, including learning.

Of course inexperienced children left to their own devices may not make the best decisions, and experienced adults must at times force them to do things for their own good. However you have to actually know what is better for them. So many terrible practices have been perpetuated because "I was ultimately better off for it." Once you accept that no one who came before you knew what they were doing, that they were all working with less information available than what you have now, and that in many cases you succeeded in spite of those shortcomings, not because of them, then you become cautious when playing the "I know better" card.

It does work in my experience.

> I am 4. I have many interests. I would love to read books about those interests, but in order to do this, I have to do phonics drills and practice sounding out words. But I am 4, and I do not have the cognitive skills to force myself to do unpleasant practice to acquire a skill which I will some day cherish. I must be made to learn.

My kids learned to read without being forced. They did not do phonics, they learned to read whole words from flashcards. As far as they were concerned it was guessing game. Then on to reading books together designed for more whole word recognition, which is reading guns stories. I wrote a blog post about it: https://pietersz.co.uk/2009/11/educating-lucy-learning

> I am 14. I have many interests. I would love to have a career revolving around those interests, but in order to do this, I have to acquire various basic skills and distinguish myself. But I am 14, etc.

You can explain to a 14 year old. My kids had been out of school for years at that age and I had not had to force them to do anything. A teenager is perfectly capable of understanding that in order to achieve somethings they have to do other things. If they want a particular career you explain that as well as the interesting things they have to do some less interesting things. If they want to study a particular subject to a higher level they have to meet entrance requirements.

> You have to make them do stuff sometimes, including learning.

Sometimes, but rarely with learning. The problem is that making them do stuff is the default, not the exception.

I'm glad you've experienced success with these strategies, but unfortunately you can't generalize that.

> They did not do phonics, they learned to read whole words from flashcards.

Whole language learning is a perfect example of this: The fifth word on the Wikipedia page for whole language is "discredited." [1] It's been linked to systemic regressions in literacy among children. Clever kids with lots of support can succeed despite whole language methods, but in general, whole language is significantly worse than phonics. I'm glad it worked for your kids — hands-on attention from a parent is an excellent way to learn :) — but in the classroom, it is empirically much worse than the alternatives.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language

> The problem is that making them do stuff is the default, not the exception.

It is great for kids to be intrinsically motivated & I think the course material should be as engaging as possible, but often the kids are disengaged regardless, and I'm skeptical that there's some special trick we can pull to make the majority of kids passionate about fourth grade math class. A lot of them just won't be that interested in long division, and I think it's better to make learning a smooth and efficient experience than to jangle enrichment opportunities in front of their faces like cat toys. Alternative approaches always irritated the hell out of me as a kid. "Aren't you inspired? Don't you feel creative?" No! Just tell me what's going to be on the test and let me do the work!

The wikipedia article you cite is marked as needing citations.

The research shows whole word learning does not work well in a classroom setting. it works well one to one. If parents do it as a game with kids it works. Its worked for at least two generations in my family and we all learned to read at least a bit before we went to school, or outside school, or in a different language and alphabet (English at home) we learned in school. Well ahead of school in the latter cases, despite a phonetic alphabet in school!

> t is great for kids to be intrinsically motivated & I think the course material should be as engaging as possible, but often the kids are disengaged regardless

They disengage because they are forced to do things that are disengaging. As other have commented kids enter schooling enjoy learning, and a few years later have lost it.

> A lot of them just won't be that interested in long division,

Why do long division? There is lots of maths that is interesting. We are talking past each other here. I am saying the curriculum learning demotivating, and your answer is that kids need to be forced to do curriculum learning. I have specifically discussed maths in other comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409430 and there are links to more detail about some of my experiences with maths from the blog post I linked to already.

> Alternative approaches always irritated the hell out of me as a kid. "Aren't you inspired? Don't you feel creative?"

If they needed to ask, they are already doing it wrong. I certainly never did anything like that. I cannot even imagine why you would ask a child that.

People naturally like learning some things and dislike learning others. The idea that if some learning is not interesting to everyone is misguided.

And no, something being useful and relevant does not make it interesting on itself. Even if you know it is useful you can just dislike having to learn it.

What is wrong with focusing on what you find interesting and doing only what is really necessary of what you do not? The problem is forcing everyone, regardless of talents or interests or aims, to follow the same curriculum

If you know its useful you are still motived. if you are motivated overall you will develop the discipline to get through what you do not find interesting and put the work in. it avoids situations like this from the first comment in this thread: "they would simply never study or do the homework I assigned them, and then they would do terrible on tests and I'd be stuck having to give them a bad grade."

this is exactly how you create a population that is mathematically illiterate and ripe for manipulation by foreign powers and marketing agencies.

Our society and any democracy relies on a shared minimum level of competence. If you cannot compare costs per unit, do not understand basic biology, or cannot compare evidence, just because it does not interest you, you are cannot function in modern society.

Quite the opposite. A better education overall makes you better at maths, and more able to think critically. Killing kids love of learning is not the way to a better education. Drilling and memorising does not help you learn to think better. Engaging with things you are interested in does.

I find it very frustrating that people just refuse to believe there cannot be a better way to do things despite all the evidence (many, many academic studies) and the experience of people who have tried doing something different.

> If you cannot compare costs per unit

You are missing the point. You can make learning to do these things fun so kids want to do it. They will find a need for basic arithmetic to do something else and learn at that point.

> do not understand basic biology

Why not? Lots of people do not know basic biology after going through the school system.

> or cannot compare evidence

Why would someone who follows interests not be able to compare evidence? Every field has arguments and requires evidence.

For all these, my experience (and the available more formal evidence) is that allowing kids to follow interests (with guidance, help, suggestions as required) leads to far better results than forcing them to sit through a rigid and boring curriculum.

Respectfully, it is you who should be more open to learning history and the story behind how things ended up the way they are.

The modern education system is far from perfect, but it did not evolve in a vacuum.

These supposedly better ways to do things are how we ended up with disproven ideas like while language learning and a generation of kids who struggle to read.

Being able to opt out of calculus is not the same as being unable to add single digit numbers. I do not share your belief that a child or the average parents are anywhere near qualified to follow their interests and produce people who are competent members of society.