I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that we too often learn whether things are good or bad without learning why. It gets discussed most with politic

I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that we too often learn whether things are good or bad without learning why. It gets discussed most with politics and ethics, where people can revile a past movement while happily reinventing all of its beliefs. But the same goes for "science fandom", where 'science' is the good thing which knows settled facts, rather than the actual investigative process that discovered them. Or too for replication-crisis academia, where everything from peer review to significance testing are treated as ritual barriers to getting published. (Not just by publish-or-perish; people like Wansink seem to genuinely have no idea why they need good methodology.) My old school district has repeatedly cut funding for science, non-core tech classes from programming to computer art, and any sort of 'extra' content from accelerated classes to non-teacher experts. (For years, they had a floating "science demonstrator" who was one of the best and most scientifically-minded educators I've ever met. Not anymore.) Meanwhile, there's constant talk about how teaching students to be at the cutting edge of STEM is a major priority. They've rationalized that divide with things like 'science and technology studies' (meaning Powerpoints about science topics) and 'STEAM' (I'm all for arts education, but it's basically being used here as a broadened slogan to avoid talking about science). Outside of one great physics teacher, the most science-minded class I remember taking was actually a machine shop class. Giving up the STEM talisman and taking on inherently open-ended problems like "it's making a funny noise" did wonders for getting people to think inquisitively and logically.