My brothers and I definitely benefited from parents who instilled an enjoyment of learning in us. We like finding out more about something for its own sake, delving deeper, and, yes, we all still get a little sad thinking about what happened to the Library of Alexandria some centuries ago.
Now we’re trying to figure out what our parents did specifically, because we have kids of our own. Kids who need to read, write, or work on ‘rithmetic.
And in the Internet-age of easily compartmentalized information, that seems all the more important, both for our kids and people in general. What are we doing as a society to encourage more curious citizens (we seem to know how to encourage consumers pretty well).
All of these are things that came to mind while reading Scott Samuelson’s piece in The Atlantic. The question he asks at the end is well worth considering.