The engine that powers young minds

EDWARD GLAESER'S "Educating ourselves about education" (Op-ed, Oct. 3) correctly targets teachers and principals (and should have added superintendents) in any attempt to reform the public school system. Certainly increased pay for improved teacher skills and education makes sense, but the motivation of children centers in their feeling of intellectual empowerment. I have found that primary schoolchildren can devour high school math topics (number theory, algebra, analytic geometry, trigonometry, and polynomial calculus) without grades, money, or other exterior motivators.

I have worked as a volunteer after school in Salisbury with able elementary students, and find they keep coming back year after year because they know I am helping them open doors to their future. It is not so much the prospect of money as it is the kind of life they want to live. There is a richness of thought that their teachers need to convey to them that helps them realize what pleasure they will find in learning and in using their trained intelligence.

Schools must learn to foster our natural desire to learn and to understand.

ALEXANDER Z. WARREN
Newburyport
The writer taught math for 30 years at Phillips Academy in Andover.