Our state law requires children to be instructed in "reading, writing, spelling, English grammar, geography, arithmetic and United States history and in citizenship, including a study of the town, state and federal governments." (Conn. Gen. Stat. 10-184)

How hard is that, really?

Each of those subjects by themselves could require a lifetime to master. In principle, each of us could be deemed by law to have failed in the instruction. If you've ever read a word you didn't know, written something that just wasn't very good, or failed to be the national spelling bee champion, then your parents violated the law and shirked their responsibility to have you properly instructed.

Some of those subjects can simply never be mastered. The Wikipedia entry for "geography" lists more than 25 different subcategories ranging from geomorphology and oceanography to the geography of religion, geopolitics, geomatics and geodesy.

Do you know all that?

Even simple-seeming arithmetic can't be mastered. Microsoft's 2007 version of Excel, for example, reports 850 times 77.1 as 100,000, instead of 65,535. In commenting on that display error, a blog on the website for the software package Mathematica notes that arithmetic is hard to get right, and takes the case of multiplication.

Can you multiply two numbers? The way you do it for, say, two 20-digit numbers would take you 400 pairwise multiplications. But some smarter algorithms could do it in about 80 pairwise multiplications. If you don't know those algorithms, have you failed arithmetic?

Arithmetic could also be held to include the field of number theory, which to this day has many unsolved problems that have defied solution by the brightest minds for hundreds of years. Virtually all cryptography is based on the idea that it is very hard to factor large numbers.

Are we all failures?

Should arithmetic even be required by law anymore, when calculators fit in wristwatches and cellphones and every store uses barcodes and computers instead of paper and pencil? Why must children be forced to learn long division? Should they also be forced to learn how to take the square root of large numbers by hand?

How much United States history must be required by law?

The Simpsons explains.

When Apu Nahassapeemapetilan applies for his American citizenship, the proctor asks him in the oral exam to explain the cause of the Civil War.

"Actually, there were numerous causes," Apu replies. "Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-
abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter-"

"Wait, wait." The proctor cuts him off. "Just say slavery."

"Slavery it is, sir."

Of course, we are not all experts in each of these fields. Let us graciously give the law the (unrequited) benefit of the doubt and suppose that it calls only for a working knowledge of these fields. Shouldn't any fifth-grader be able to pass a simple exam on such topics? More to the point, what should happen to those who can? Should we continue to force them to attend school for an extra seven years, a full 50 percent more of their life to date at that point?

Each graduating senior has received education over his or her lifetime that cost at least $150,000.

But what was the value of the education they actually received? Given the choice, how many of them would have preferred to study and work on their own in exchange for a lump-sum cash payment of $88,000 when they are 11 years old? Some of them could have studied and gone to college early. Some of them could have earned even more money and learned real world skills through on-the-job training had they been allowed to work. Some of them could have learned on their own at home, through the internet or through books that need not be approved by any school board or committee. And some of them could have just enjoyed their childhood a while longer.

Instead, we imprison truants.

We punish employers willing to hire kids who want to work during school hours.

We impose busywork bureaucratic requirements and the constant threat of prosecution on parents who want to home-school their children.

And the only time children are allowed to enjoy their childhood anymore is on snow days and school vacations.

phil@maymin.com