The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom....Soccer moms try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (soccer-mom-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity....Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.