2 ms·

I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. Wow. I think the most important th

by jimzvz 13y ago

I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. Wow. I think the most important thing to teach children is to be open to ideas. The universe may be billions of years old or a couple of seconds old with initial conditions that indicate a different history. Humans may be intelligent actors in a computer simulation equivalent in some other universe that we have no way of perceiving. We may all just exist in the imagination of some being we could never understand. Science is just a tool to make sense of what we can but it is not the be all and end all. If anyone is going to brainwash my kids, I would hope that it is me and not some government with their own objectives and emergent quirks. An accurate as possible representation of history, current events, philosophy and economics is just as important as a solid introduction to the state of scientific discoveries/methods/theories is to a young mind.

superuser2 13y ago
I was conceding to fleitz that there's room in those subject areas for a particular interpretation to be pushed over others. I had a great and very academic APUSH teacher with a PhD and we often joked about the hilariously pro-America bias in our textbook. These things should still be taught, objectively and well like you say, but in these areas I wouldn't dismiss outright the claim that the state often has a bias. My physics and chemistry teachers were very clear that they were teaching us a process and where it's led us for now, not the be all end all truth. We laughed at ancient chemistry (fire comes from phlogiston, an element with sometimes negative mass) and then discussed the possibility that what we're taught now could be just as hilarious in another hundred years. My physics teacher was well-versed in the current frontiers of particle physics and encouraged us to understand uncertainty. The lesson wasn't "the universe is x years old," the lesson was "hey look, we can use these measurements and some provably sound mathematical tools to come up with a number which, if certain pretty good assumptions hold true, is the age of the universe. If someone disproves the assumptions or the data, then our number is wrong, but that's really exciting because it will lead us to new understanding." I guess what I'm really supporting here is the scientific mindset. Some people who value faith feel very threatened by that, don't want their children going anywhere near it, and hold them out of school. I think the children deserve to learn about it anyway, and decide on their own what to accept.

by jimzvz 13y ago

superuser2 13y ago

I was conceding to fleitz that there's room in those subject areas for a particular interpretation to be pushed over others. I had a great and very academic APUSH teacher with a PhD and we often joked about the hilariously pro-America bias in our textbook. These things should still be taught, objectively and well like you say, but in these areas I wouldn't dismiss outright the claim that the state often has a bias. My physics and chemistry teachers were very clear that they were teaching us a process and where it's led us for now, not the be all end all truth. We laughed at ancient chemistry (fire comes from phlogiston, an element with sometimes negative mass) and then discussed the possibility that what we're taught now could be just as hilarious in another hundred years. My physics teacher was well-versed in the current frontiers of particle physics and encouraged us to understand uncertainty. The lesson wasn't "the universe is x years old," the lesson was "hey look, we can use these measurements and some provably sound mathematical tools to come up with a number which, if certain pretty good assumptions hold true, is the age of the universe. If someone disproves the assumptions or the data, then our number is wrong, but that's really exciting because it will lead us to new understanding." I guess what I'm really supporting here is the scientific mindset. Some people who value faith feel very threatened by that, don't want their children going anywhere near it, and hold them out of school. I think the children deserve to learn about it anyway, and decide on their own what to accept.