3 ms·

They should teach independent thoughts. Sadly this is so inconvenient for most of the adults.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
It's nice to dream about but it will never happen. The incentives are all wrong for public education to teach critical thought. The politically appointed or "hired by reference" committees and/or teams of bureaucrat that are responsible for setting curriculum at the state level would never do that because then they'd have to answer to politicians on both sides of the isle for making their job harder. People operating at these levels of bureaucracy don't need to be told what the boss wants, they read the room and know in which direction they should be erring. Your career doesn't take you through those sorts of positions that far if you're not the kind of person who does that. Furthermore, the career arc of someone who believes that society's problems will be solved or mitigated by helping the masses think critically is unlikely to take them anywhere near the high levels of public education policy. And even if it did happen the schools wouldn't teach it and they'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming over a decades long period (because the unions and the municipalities have enough power to play that stalling game for that long) because corralling teenagers is harder when they can call you on your bullshit forcing you to address tough topics that have no good answer other than "I'm in charge, deal with it".
tester756 5y ago
>Sadly this is so inconvenient for most of the adults. I've heard about it before, but I struggle hard to understand what does it mean like parents will go to school to flame teacher cuz their kid disagrees with them on $hot_topic?
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  It actually happens a lot (either teacher flames parents for injecting too much "independence thoughts" or the other way around). It is also very inconvenient for politicians/big corps/media.
- handrous 5y ago
  > like parents will go to school to flame teacher cuz their kid disagrees with them on $hot_topic? Worse: for even bringing up a hot topic without bending entirely to the parent's opinion on it (where these opinions differ from a straight description of the facts, is when it's really annoying to deal with this—no amount of neutrality will make them happy, because that's "indoctrination" from their POV). Definitely doesn't have to get to the point of the kid disagreeing with the parent, just presenting anything that they don't agree with can result in angry calls or visits from parents. Note also that you'd probably be very surprised what can count as a "hot topic".

It's nice to dream about but it will never happen. The incentives are all wrong for public education to teach critical thought. The politically appointed or "hired by reference" committees and/or teams of bureaucrat that are responsible for setting curriculum at the state level would never do that because then they'd have to answer to politicians on both sides of the isle for making their job harder. People operating at these levels of bureaucracy don't need to be told what the boss wants, they read the room and know in which direction they should be erring. Your career doesn't take you through those sorts of positions that far if you're not the kind of person who does that. Furthermore, the career arc of someone who believes that society's problems will be solved or mitigated by helping the masses think critically is unlikely to take them anywhere near the high levels of public education policy. And even if it did happen the schools wouldn't teach it and they'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming over a decades long period (because the unions and the municipalities have enough power to play that stalling game for that long) because corralling teenagers is harder when they can call you on your bullshit forcing you to address tough topics that have no good answer other than "I'm in charge, deal with it".

tester756 5y ago

>Sadly this is so inconvenient for most of the adults. I've heard about it before, but I struggle hard to understand what does it mean like parents will go to school to flame teacher cuz their kid disagrees with them on $hot_topic?

markus_zhang 5y ago
It actually happens a lot (either teacher flames parents for injecting too much "independence thoughts" or the other way around). It is also very inconvenient for politicians/big corps/media.
handrous 5y ago
> like parents will go to school to flame teacher cuz their kid disagrees with them on $hot_topic? Worse: for even bringing up a hot topic without bending entirely to the parent's opinion on it (where these opinions differ from a straight description of the facts, is when it's really annoying to deal with this—no amount of neutrality will make them happy, because that's "indoctrination" from their POV). Definitely doesn't have to get to the point of the kid disagreeing with the parent, just presenting anything that they don't agree with can result in angry calls or visits from parents. Note also that you'd probably be very surprised what can count as a "hot topic".