You must log in or register to comment.
I took the minimum amount of science classes in highschool. Lack of science education is less of a problem than teaching you how to sort through bullshit and analytical thinking. I basically think that our school system needs to stop focusing so hard on teaching things from the textbooks in an ever-changing world that’s cherry picked from an endless wealth of knowledge and focus more on learning how to be skeptical and check various sources and such. In school it seemed like research was always just a backseat to the goal, instead of the goal itself.
There are something like 10 million students attending Christian school and the like, and another 5 million or so being home schooled.
They don’t really believe in the scientific method and critical thinking, in general. At least in my experience as a student of a Christian school. I had no idea.
Ignorance is piss
My highschool chemistry teacher almost got kicked out of her university for trying to pipette hydrochloric acid with her mouth. That’s who I want teaching chemistry, the crazy woman who knows what it means to fuck up, bad. Not some honor roll, life plan having baby bitch.
I always found science and history interesting even though i hated school.
Maths though, i always resented “you wont always have a calculator” … but now as im older i imagine kids today having a similar idea about “AI” and i can see that not ending well for anyone.
Stay curious‼️ 🤔
Real. Curiosity is such a desirable trait in folks.
I found by high school the kids who said that (that hadn’t dropped out) moved onto a different argument by that age
Honestly, I know it ruins the joke, but I don’t think there’s as much overlap between the top and bottom groups as one may suspect
If we want children to learn these things, we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes. I’m not saying we should get rid of science classes, but the people who are saying these stupid things did actually take science classes in school.
We desperately need to teach classes that are specific. I learned a lot about problem solving from math classes, but I was shocked when I tutored other kids, and they only learned the math, but had no idea how to approach problems. And I don’t mean just word problems, but literally even if you just give them multiple equations and variables.
My tutoring often went like this: “I can’t solve this!” “What information to they give you? What answer do they want? What can you do with the stuff that they’ve given you to get the answer?” And then they get the answer. Then repeat. Literally no math involved in the tutoring for math class.
So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I’ll call empathy. By “empathy”, I mean the ability to imagine yourself in another person’s shoes so that you can predict why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s essential for detecting misinformation because you need to trust somebody at some point, so you need to understand how to tell who is more likely to be trustworthy. I also think we should teach children meditation techniques.
So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I’ll call empathy.
Good luck. The 2012 Texas GOP platform specifically opposed the teaching of critical thinking skills. Needless to say, the entire GOP feels the same way to this date. Also, empathy is now considered a weakness or moral failing in those circles.
Face it. The federal government and the state governments of a large fraction of the states are diametrically opposed to our desires.
Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re correct about what our goals should be. But calling it an uphill battle to achieve them would be an understatement of epic proportions.
Edit: 2012, not 2021
It is very much intentional in a lot of places to keep the status quo.
But how do you teach those skills directly
Science classes
Okay, but what are electrolytes?
What plants crave…
You take time to answer questions in class rather than force feeding standardized test questions down their throats. Kids don’t lose their curiosity. They just get tired of hearing some variation of, “I’ll answer that later.”
You simply apply your problem solving skills as an adult. You want students to understand how to do these things. Well, how do you do these things? Then teach the students the method that you use. That’s the simplest version. But there’s been a lot of research about how to teach things, so following the best research is the better version.
I think I gave a small example of teaching problem solving in my 3rd paragraph where I described tutoring math. But you can use any problems instead of simply math problems.
Really, I say this as a very introverted person with a strong STEM background, I think the most important skills children learn from school are their interpersonal skills, but we rarely teach them directly. So, you can work through typical problems in class, like for problem solving, say, you want to use the gaming console, but your sibling is using it. What can you do?
Similarly, how do YOU know when something is misinformation? Just teach the children to take the same steps you do. “I doubt this information because based on these previous incidents, I’ve seen that this person has a reason to lie about this.” Or, “If I think about it, there is somebody who is profiting from people acting on this information, and so I that makes me dubious about this.”
How do you know when a conspiracy theory is very unlikely? The more important it is and the more people who must participate in it, the less likely the theory is to be true. That’s why you can write off flat earth theories almost instantly with very little knowledge of science.
You can teach critical thinking via debate class, for example, but I think there are some other methods, too. Critical thinking is probably the hardest to imagine a way to teach.
Art! Where logic fails to motivate, artistic expression can lead to emotional understanding
I don’t agree with this. The stuff written by, for example, the “vaccines cause autism” people can sound as sophisticated and authoritative as any textbook. A high-school education isn’t going to help someone judge it according to its merits. Thus the problem is a collapse of trust in authority rather than a lack of basic knowledge, because ultimately an ordinary person can only decide to trust the scientific consensus without meaningfully verifying it.
But understanding how science works is key to having trust in it. If you lack that understanding you may just think it’s a bunch of stuck up eggheads who pick whatever truth is convenient to them.
But both sides sound as if they have done real science, so a basic understanding of how science is done won’t be enough to tell them apart. You can get anti-vaccine books written in an academic tone with citations. They go through the appearance of presenting evidence. The only difference between the two sides that is visible to an ordinary member of the public is that one side represents “the establishment” and the other side doesn’t.
Even professional scientists have to have a lot of trust in the institutions of science - if I read a paper then unless there is something egregiously wrong, I rely on the journal and the scientific community to check that the authors did what they claimed to do and that they got the results they claim to have.
It really depends how science is taught: whether they’re tought to memorise a bunch of facts and formulas, or actually use reasoning…
People like this argument, because they can then hate autistics. They could say we are inherently broken and need to be “fixed” or genocided.
At this point, I only respect people who were discriminated/abused/mistreated in their childhood.
Yeah it’s what they’re being taught and their own personal failings and absolutely not the capitalism and control propaganda machine!!
paid for by the Capitalism and Control Propaganda Machine, LLC copyright 1983
so… you’re blaming children?
“Adults” who act like children.
