I started rowing due to peer pressure.

The only people I knew in my new city were rowers, so I took up rowing. That was fine with me — I love early mornings, being on the water, and working as part of a team.

I didn’t love rowing, though. Not at first. It was confusing, physically demanding, and even a little bit painful (blisters upon blisters). And if I messed up particularly badly, I might unwittingly toss a half dozen people into the sea.

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Education, along with everything else, is in crisis in the United States. One of the central problems we’re going to be facing this fall is that, once again, working parents will be forced to find some way for school and work to coexist.

By no means do I believe that I can come up with a universal solution to the challenge of school closures. However, I do have some thoughts to contribute to the conversation; as usual, my approach to pedagogy is grounded in my long experience as a music teacher. What I learned in that context is surprisingly applicable here.

The question I’m pondering is this: Why shouldn’t a school-age child be able to do his own work independently while sitting side by side with a parent who is working?

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The body of collective human knowledge has its origin in good questions.

Questions like “Does the sun actually revolve around the earth?” and “What will happen if I take a bite of this thing that looks like food?” have helped humans to develop an ever-advancing civilization.

At its core, science is a systematic framework for asking and answering questions and organizing the knowledge gained therefrom.

It’s tempting, when there’s a good question, to simply look up the answer. It’s never been easier to do so.

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Starting a new hobby or learning a new skill can bring on a sort of infatuation phase: You think about it all the time, even when you’re supposed to be doing other things. When you can’t actually be engaging in your new pastime, you’re watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts about it. You can’t get enough.

And you may start to feel a little self-conscious about it. If you have big goals, however, ignore that feeling and do your thing.

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Young people are told they can be anything they want to be and exhorted to strive to achieve their dreams, but when the people around them are living mundane existences that leave little room for thinking big, what message are we actually sending?

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I want every kid in the world to know that they don't have to wait until they’re done with school to start their actual lives.

What is the scary thing that you’d really love to do? What can you do today to move toward it?

Too many of us postpone our dreams. We don't even think our dreams are possible in our circumstances.

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The body of collective human knowledge is impossibly vast and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.

That doesn’t mean we don’t bother to learn stuff. But we have to freely acknowledge to kids that there is no possible way to know everything. Otherwise, we create the illusion that they are learning everything they need to know in school.

So how do we approach learning without getting overwhelmed?

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