4 ms·

Hard disagree. The nature of "science" should be woven into all of these courses. That will be what all students can take away from the science classes, not jus

by SamBam 6y ago

Hard disagree. The nature of "science" should be woven into all of these courses. That will be what all students can take away from the science classes, not just the students who decide to stick with them after seeing if they "enjoy" them. (And do we teach English or history simply to see if kids will "enjoy" them later?) Most good schools actually already do this as part of their standards-based curriculum. The Next Generation Science Standards [1] has "Practices" as one of its three key strands, which focuses on how to ask questions like a scientist, what evidence is, how you design an experiment, etc. The nature of "inquiry" is applicable to all future understanding of what scientists do, more so than memorizing whether mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. 1. https://www.nextgenscience.org/ https://www.nextgenscience.org/

konjin 6y ago
We need more science literacy, not humanities trying to stay relevant by dragging science down. Teaching students sentential and first order logic would be a much better start since they would at least know what they are trying to prove, then some probability so they know what a 5% chance actually means and casual inference if you're feeling overly ambitious to realize why correlation might (or might not) be correlation.
- mrpf1ster 6y ago
  What a very closed minded comment. Humanities and science are deeply intertwined, especially philosophy. Not to mention disregarding an entire category of human expression and experience as "dragging science down". Humanities is just as relevant as science, and so often influence each other that it almost makes no sense to distinguish them. I highly doubt that by teaching children logic and probability we will solve science denialism. Cramming more science facts or abstract math equations into student's brains doesn't do much for their critical thinking and reasoning skills. Encouraging children to ask questions, reason based off of evidence, and inspiring a love for figuring out how our world works should be the main goal of any science class.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Khun sounds reasonable to people who don't know mathematics, which is just about everyone in the humanities. The few who do know mathematics have very interesting things to say, but again, they are very few and they are very far from being popular in their own fields. If you can't do something as simple as expand or factor a polynomial then you can't understand science, in the same way that you can't understand Latin if you only speak English. The idea that we throw out old theories and start over looks like that to people who don't understand the language those theories are written in, to people who do the difference between doing quantum mechanics and classical physics is the difference between saying potahto and potaito. A bit more linear algebra, a bit less differential equations and a few more dimensions than you expect. There is a reason why you study the same maths classes for both classical, quantum and relativistic mechanics. The stories we tell are just that, stories that help build intuition, but are completely optional, and they even change in the same subject depending on what you're trying to calculate. >Cramming more science facts or abstract math equations into student's brains doesn't do much for their critical thinking and reasoning skills. Encouraging children to ask questions, reason based off of evidence, and inspiring a love for figuring out how our world works should be the main goal of any science class. Yes, which is why we should teach them how to actually think in a structured way, something that saying 'science is sexist and colonialist' does not do. But that does increase the power and prestige of the humanities because they have 70 years of pointless theory to talk about *ism.
    - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
      The humanities don’t say that science is sexist and colonialist. That’s a strawman. I’ve never understood why STEM folks hate the humanities so much. I for one like both mathematics and history. I like coding and I like music. I find value in all of them. I don’t think I’m a rare case. Actually, I think most people are like that. It’s only on HN that I see so many people look down on the humanities like they were a scam or something.

by SamBam 6y ago

konjin 6y ago

We need more science literacy, not humanities trying to stay relevant by dragging science down. Teaching students sentential and first order logic would be a much better start since they would at least know what they are trying to prove, then some probability so they know what a 5% chance actually means and casual inference if you're feeling overly ambitious to realize why correlation might (or might not) be correlation.

mrpf1ster 6y ago
What a very closed minded comment. Humanities and science are deeply intertwined, especially philosophy. Not to mention disregarding an entire category of human expression and experience as "dragging science down". Humanities is just as relevant as science, and so often influence each other that it almost makes no sense to distinguish them. I highly doubt that by teaching children logic and probability we will solve science denialism. Cramming more science facts or abstract math equations into student's brains doesn't do much for their critical thinking and reasoning skills. Encouraging children to ask questions, reason based off of evidence, and inspiring a love for figuring out how our world works should be the main goal of any science class.
- konjin 6y ago
  Khun sounds reasonable to people who don't know mathematics, which is just about everyone in the humanities. The few who do know mathematics have very interesting things to say, but again, they are very few and they are very far from being popular in their own fields. If you can't do something as simple as expand or factor a polynomial then you can't understand science, in the same way that you can't understand Latin if you only speak English. The idea that we throw out old theories and start over looks like that to people who don't understand the language those theories are written in, to people who do the difference between doing quantum mechanics and classical physics is the difference between saying potahto and potaito. A bit more linear algebra, a bit less differential equations and a few more dimensions than you expect. There is a reason why you study the same maths classes for both classical, quantum and relativistic mechanics. The stories we tell are just that, stories that help build intuition, but are completely optional, and they even change in the same subject depending on what you're trying to calculate. >Cramming more science facts or abstract math equations into student's brains doesn't do much for their critical thinking and reasoning skills. Encouraging children to ask questions, reason based off of evidence, and inspiring a love for figuring out how our world works should be the main goal of any science class. Yes, which is why we should teach them how to actually think in a structured way, something that saying 'science is sexist and colonialist' does not do. But that does increase the power and prestige of the humanities because they have 70 years of pointless theory to talk about *ism.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    The humanities don’t say that science is sexist and colonialist. That’s a strawman. I’ve never understood why STEM folks hate the humanities so much. I for one like both mathematics and history. I like coding and I like music. I find value in all of them. I don’t think I’m a rare case. Actually, I think most people are like that. It’s only on HN that I see so many people look down on the humanities like they were a scam or something.