3 ms·

All of these myths I learned in school make me think it was an even bigger waste of time than I originally though.

rabuse 5y ago
Our public education in the U.S. is a travesty. There's really no incentive to remain up-to-date on information, and it seems to be getting worse.
- mncharity 5y ago
  An educator suggests[1], in the context of preK science education, that students have a human right to make sense of their world "now". That's very not the focus of current science education content. PreK-13. But what if were? What might that look like? Status quo is students being told the Sun is yellow, from preK on through to the most common intro astronomy college textbooks, with only a few of them getting an "oops, nope, our bad" decades later, in astronomy graduate school discussion of common misconceptions in astronomy education. We've known Sun color for a century, had detailed limb darkening and tint numbers for decades, and now years of intensive effort on stellar atmospheres in support of occultation and exoplanet work. Also years of hemispherical-camera daytime-sky surveys. And science education content manages to remain decoupled from all of that. A startup pivoted from supporting learning of English in Japan, because the market there turned out to be for performance on English proficiency exams, not for English fluency. And a teacher remarked that it seemed the societal objective was English accessibility for work, while avoiding the fluency which could contaminate culture. Similarly, an truly excellent briefing on biology would necessarily be pervasively steeped in evolution... and thus be less than entirely welcome in the US. Not that Europe or Russia, or China, India, or Brasil, have incentivized its creation either. It seems neither the science research nor science education communities are set up to pursue it. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Larimore+Vision+2020 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Larimore+Vision+2020
ptr2voidStar 5y ago
This is precisely my thoughts, as I scroll through the comments - jaw on the floor.
dredmorbius 5y ago
The roles played by education are ... an interesting topic. It's not a complete waste, but motives must be understood. True education belongs when you become self-motivated to learn (and hopefully don't fall prey to the numerous other pitfalls which exist). First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church, and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "venerable institutions" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they ... [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (J.S. Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, p. 429 (1981), J.S. Mill, Journals and Debating Speeches, p. 350. (1988) ). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off their fetters. The state devised a second educational strategy in order to prevent such a calamity from occurring. According to Mill, the "elementary schools for children of the working classes" were given the task of ensuring that the poor would continue to accept docilely their dismal station in life. It was very easy for the state to force the public schools to assume this role. It did so simply by failing malignantly to allocate sufficient funds for the operations of what Mill identified contemptuously as "places called schools" (J.S. Mill, Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, p.200; emphasis in original). See: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 I've discussed this earlier and in more depth here: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_role_of_universities_and_primary_education/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_...

Our public education in the U.S. is a travesty. There's really no incentive to remain up-to-date on information, and it seems to be getting worse.

mncharity 5y ago
An educator suggests[1], in the context of preK science education, that students have a human right to make sense of their world "now". That's very not the focus of current science education content. PreK-13. But what if were? What might that look like? Status quo is students being told the Sun is yellow, from preK on through to the most common intro astronomy college textbooks, with only a few of them getting an "oops, nope, our bad" decades later, in astronomy graduate school discussion of common misconceptions in astronomy education. We've known Sun color for a century, had detailed limb darkening and tint numbers for decades, and now years of intensive effort on stellar atmospheres in support of occultation and exoplanet work. Also years of hemispherical-camera daytime-sky surveys. And science education content manages to remain decoupled from all of that. A startup pivoted from supporting learning of English in Japan, because the market there turned out to be for performance on English proficiency exams, not for English fluency. And a teacher remarked that it seemed the societal objective was English accessibility for work, while avoiding the fluency which could contaminate culture. Similarly, an truly excellent briefing on biology would necessarily be pervasively steeped in evolution... and thus be less than entirely welcome in the US. Not that Europe or Russia, or China, India, or Brasil, have incentivized its creation either. It seems neither the science research nor science education communities are set up to pursue it. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Larimore+Vision+2020 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Larimore+Vision+2020

ptr2voidStar 5y ago

This is precisely my thoughts, as I scroll through the comments - jaw on the floor.

dredmorbius 5y ago

The roles played by education are ... an interesting topic. It's not a complete waste, but motives must be understood. True education belongs when you become self-motivated to learn (and hopefully don't fall prey to the numerous other pitfalls which exist). First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church, and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "venerable institutions" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the university "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they ... [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opinions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (J.S. Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, p. 429 (1981), J.S. Mill, Journals and Debating Speeches, p. 350. (1988) ). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental in perpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in potential attempts at throwing off their fetters. The state devised a second educational strategy in order to prevent such a calamity from occurring. According to Mill, the "elementary schools for children of the working classes" were given the task of ensuring that the poor would continue to accept docilely their dismal station in life. It was very easy for the state to force the public schools to assume this role. It did so simply by failing malignantly to allocate sufficient funds for the operations of what Mill identified contemptuously as "places called schools" (J.S. Mill, Essays on England, Ireland, and the Empire, p.200; emphasis in original). See: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346760110081599 I've discussed this earlier and in more depth here: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_role_of_universities_and_primary_education/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_...