Down in Tennessee, on a blog called TennesseeTicket, there is this nice description of children and learning and the role of society:

Children at this young age do not see learning as a “required” activity. They just do it. All one needs to do is provide access to the materials and information, and they set about having fun soaking up the knowledge. It is for this reason that pre-K learning should be seriously considered as a common goal. Yes, there is a strong argument that the primary responsibility of a child’s education lies with the child’s parent(s), but that stance could be (and is) used to argue against public education in general. If we accept that the society, through its state, has an interest in a well-educated populace, then our provisions wisely include measures to address this motherlode of time-sensitive learning capacity.