As we went through our final back to school night at Amity Middle School in Bethany, there were several things going through my mind. This was the school that Kim went to and she talked about remembering which seat she sat in for different classes. Fiona’s social studies teacher gave us a pop quiz in which we were asked things about what we remembered from junior high school. It raises an interesting question: What do we want our children to get out of junior high school?

It seems like by the time junior high school comes around, many parents are focused on making sure that their kids will do well in the rat race. They need to get good grades in junior high school so they will do well in high school, so they will do well in college, so they will get a good job, so they can support their family as their kids repeat the same cycle.

The high stakes testing just reinforces this. Yet is this really what we should be striving for? Or, are we testing the wrong thing?

I thought back to the nursery school each of my daughters attended. It was part of an alternative private school that focused on love of learning as being the ultimate goal. What makes learning exciting? Some of it is how interestingly it is taught. Some of it is how well it is related back to everyone’s life. Some of it is simply, well, how much fun it is.

I believe that love of learning is much more important than just about anything that is tested these days. Love of learning will make just about any career, any life, more enjoyable.

If you look at the current social climate, you can see the effects of what is going on in education. Are more of your friends talking about how much they love their job, or how much they hate their job? Are they talking about how much they like current political leaders, or how much they dislike current political leaders?

Our system is broken, and a big part of it is the loss of fun, something we are losing earlier and earlier in life. So, as I think back on Fiona’s teachers that I met this evening, I find I remember the ones that were talking about what they do to make the material fun and interesting.