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Comment by syshum | Hacker News Reader

>>I don't think teaching science better

It is not about teaching science better, it is about teaching critical thinking at all.

Schools, especially primary schools, are devoted to conformity, social acceptance, and political correctness

They do not teach people to be critical of those in authority, or power.

This drives out the required critical thinking a person needs when they hear dissent on climate change, or how GMO's will be the end of humanity instead they just accept it as fact because a person of authority in their lives(be it a politician, preacher, or even simply an older adult they look up to) has told them it is fact so it is fact.

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Schools, especially primary schools, are devoted to conformity, social acceptance, and political correctness

Bingo and well said! We condition our kids to accept everything they read in their textbooks as fact. Critical thinking is key and missing.

When I was in grade 3 on MLK day our teacher split our class into 'races' by eye color and gave blue eyes treats made the brown eyes do work, it's a known/controversial exercise meant to teach about discrimination, which it did, but also it made us question authority.

We should create exercises where teachers/staff purposely present incorrect or conflicting information to students, forcing them to regularly question the quality of the information and the motivations/agenda of the source.

In the UK basic level the English language exam sat by all 16 year olds did used to do this to some limited extent (you were given an advert and had to analyse it in terms of how it tried to persuade you etc).

A lot of critical thinking and questioning of authority without the proper framework of rationality and methodology can backfire into turning more people into paranoid tinfoil hatters rather than critical thinkers with a healthy skepticism of leaders.

Unfortunately, most of our current public education system was not designed to create thinkers as much as assembly line workers and this erodes the confidence in our education system by knee-jerk public institution haters that make up a great deal of the US population.

I don't particularly like public anything but the either-or mentality that pervades public discourse really needs to be addressed for progress in discourse to proceed. Talking about the same wedge issues like we did 50 years ago as if nothing's changed since the issue came up is not progress in discourse at all by definition. It's reminiscent of many long, bad marriages - the arguments are always the same.

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