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I'm completely in agreement. I think I danced around this in my post. The main things that bother me, in general: 1. Undiscerning student (i.e. young, impressi

by Cpoll 5y ago

I'm completely in agreement. I think I danced around this in my post. The main things that bother me, in general: 1. Undiscerning student (i.e. young, impressionable, hasn't been taught critical thinking, doesn't have sufficient experience to evaluate the validity of what they're learning). 2. Things taught non-critically. I think this even applies to the "obvious" stuff like algebra and heliocentrism. My experience with public schooling was that there was too much rote memorization and appeal to authority and not enough "learning." If either of those are fixed (and I think they go hand-in-hand) I don't care if the curriculum/school library has Rand, an unannotated Mein Kampf, or $insert_book_promoting_an_agenda.

kbenson 5y ago
> Undiscerning student (i.e. young, impressionable, hasn't been taught critical thinking, doesn't have sufficient experience to evaluate the validity of what they're learning). Ideally there would be an adult figure in all children's lives to fill this role. If nobody else, their parents or other adult figures (and yes, there are cases where there are no adults, but we can't make societal decisions on the norm based on the the edge cases). I can't help that most the adults that complain about their children getting access to ideas they don't like are those adults that don't bother to talk to their children about their views and ideas and know to challenge them on ideas that are poorly thought out. If you ignore your child's interests for years and then are surprised to find out they have completely opposite views from you that you disagree with, the problem is not the literature they read, it's your lack of involvement in the formation of their ideas. If you (the general you) are involved and your child has views you disagree with but you can't provide compelling arguments to make them change their mind, at a minimum you should also be looking at your own views to see how well they stand up and not assume your own infallibility. Doesn't mean you're wrong, but don't expect that you're always right when you might be espousing the equivalent of 1+1=3 and rightly getting told to shove it. We aren't factories pumping out clones, we're creating people, and people have their own views. The best you can do is try to help them avoid the pitfalls.

by Cpoll 5y ago

kbenson 5y ago

> Undiscerning student (i.e. young, impressionable, hasn't been taught critical thinking, doesn't have sufficient experience to evaluate the validity of what they're learning). Ideally there would be an adult figure in all children's lives to fill this role. If nobody else, their parents or other adult figures (and yes, there are cases where there are no adults, but we can't make societal decisions on the norm based on the the edge cases). I can't help that most the adults that complain about their children getting access to ideas they don't like are those adults that don't bother to talk to their children about their views and ideas and know to challenge them on ideas that are poorly thought out. If you ignore your child's interests for years and then are surprised to find out they have completely opposite views from you that you disagree with, the problem is not the literature they read, it's your lack of involvement in the formation of their ideas. If you (the general you) are involved and your child has views you disagree with but you can't provide compelling arguments to make them change their mind, at a minimum you should also be looking at your own views to see how well they stand up and not assume your own infallibility. Doesn't mean you're wrong, but don't expect that you're always right when you might be espousing the equivalent of 1+1=3 and rightly getting told to shove it. We aren't factories pumping out clones, we're creating people, and people have their own views. The best you can do is try to help them avoid the pitfalls.