Youth need not be limited, shamed

How many of our high school students will go on to careers in engineering, math or science [“Invest in state’s future workforce,” Opinion, Jan. 15]? A small fraction of them. Then why, every year, do we spend millions of dollars, thousands of hours, and buckets of blood, sweat and tears attempting to educate every single one of them as if that’s what they’re destined to be?

There will always be kids who want to be scientists, and nothing will stop them. And there will always be kids who don’t want to be scientists, and nothing will make them.

Once our kids have achieved a certain minimal, acceptable level of scientific proficiency, lay off and let them spread their wings a bit — take a shop class, sing in the choir, act in the school play, try another language. Instead of shaming them by unfavorably comparing them to kids around the world, we need to show our children that we trust them with the freedom to wander, and wonder, while they’re still young.

--David Drummond, Shoreline