I’m thinking of doing a series of crafting meetups this fall on Zoom, just for fun.

My usual knitting group has been on hold for many months now, but I miss the sociability and comfort of stitching with others.

I’ve mentioned this idea to a few people. Some are interested, but not all of them know how to knit or crochet yet.

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When I started designing a school curriculum, my intent was to make things fun whenever possible.

After all, learning is fun. Why shouldn’t school be fun?

I added brain teasers, puzzles, and games to the menu — and discovered that they did nothing to entice reluctant students. They felt just the same way about the supposedly “fun” activities as they did about the straightforward “read this chapter and answer the questions” assignments. They inspired dread, mostly.

I had overlooked a basic paradox of education: The puzzles designed to make learning fun are only fun for the learners who are already having fun.

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I wasn’t allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. (Yes, it killed my elementary school social life big time.) For some reason, we were only allowed a bit of Mr. Magoo before the TV was shut off and it was time for breakfast.

Mr. Magoo centers on the adventures of a hapless, legally blind retiree who has frequent brushes with death and disaster as a result of his inability to see — and his seeming unawareness that he can’t see. He bumbles through life oblivious to the danger he’s in and the degree to which other people are constantly rescuing him.

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The body of collective human knowledge is impossibly vast and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.

That doesn’t mean we don’t bother to learn stuff. But we have to freely acknowledge to kids that there is no possible way to know everything. Otherwise, we create the illusion that they are learning everything they need to know in school.

So how do we approach learning without getting overwhelmed?

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Learning for your own reasons is vastly different from learning to satisfy someone else’s requirements.

If a student has been assigned a chapter to read (say, on the ancient civilization of Mohenjo-Daro), she will pursue this task fairly shallowly if she’s only out to prove to her teacher that she read it. She’ll go through the material, answer the questions, and move on.

On the other hand, if the student has her own reasons for wanting to learn about this topic, she will go far deeper.

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