A problem in our country is that we feel rote education is the only model that works until college, which unfortunately is not even mandatory. This results in two very different problems: the lack of critical thinking capacity and the loss of wonder.

Under the first, we have too many people who aren't trained to critically think. Not enough people think about what they hear, read, or see and instead just accept it as truth, when more often than not it's just a version of the truth, and in some instances, an outright lie. The differences which may seem like minutia might actually foster end results miles away. Not enough people stop and ask "really?" Or more importantly "why?" Because sometimes, when we ask why, the answers we're originally given just don't make sense.

Second, children are the only ones left that have wonder in today's society. They're the only ones that believe in the unbelievable. Part of this is the emphasis on science. I don't think science is bad, only finite. It emphasis on understanding everything is laudable, but at the same time limiting. Who's not to say that faith healing doesn't work, that magic doesn't exist, or that there might even be those who can change back and forth between human and animal form? If there were ways to quantify and understand these things, there would probably be scientific models that would explain them. And maybe that in itself would kill the wonder. But I think what I'm trying to say is that science seems to foreclose the possibility of all it can't explain. And so as a society we build walls around ourselves, saying that isn't possible, or that can't be true. But shouldn't we all wonder?