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Comment by tcfunk | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related - I posed this question to my 4th grade science teacher. She was quick to shoot me down, and I'll never forget it.

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I'm not saying the following is what happened in your situation. As an anecdotal insight, I have friends who are K thru 8 school teachers teachers and they have to be extremely careful with this type of question. The reason is religion, specifically Christian religion. If they misstep and posit a view that contradicts a child's parent's religious views then they are, best case scenario, going to hear about it or, worst case scenario, going to have parents form a group whose sole purpose is ousting the teacher from the school.

From my soap box, the religious self-policing, to me, is one of the more disconcerting aspects of the education system in the United States. As a personal observation, if a parent is worried that a single teacher providing an intentionally unbiased perspective on a philosophical topic is going to challenge a child's beliefs to the point where it overcomes a family's and church's indoctrination then it isn't the new perspective that's the problem. To this day I believe that "core curriculum" should include logic and philosophy with an emphasis greater than all other topics.

Critical thinking is the greatest threat to religious indoctrination as it relies on the acceptance of teachings as fact from authorities at face-value without question. If a child learns to be skeptical and questioning, they'll never learn to believe something that can't be supported given the currently available evidence, or may very well be contradicted by it.

Critical thinking is good - but kids can ask questions that are very difficult to answer (but we think of those as common knowledge)

For example: This question

> Why is 1+0 = 1 and not 10

Attempt to find an answer will generate more questions and it is a journey down the rabbit hole. Sometimes you don't want to do that.

And upto high-school I learnt things that were based on assumptions that I kept questioning. Internet brought be some peace in my college years. Unfortunately, nowadays internet is also filled with fake/wrong/hoax/biased stuff.

Because zero is an additive identity. Might as well teach your kid number theory.

> rabbit hole

But why not go down a rabbit hole with a child, I feel it could be a wonderful experience that will challenge your beliefs and that of the kid. I don't really get the fascination with ignoring these type of questions: "Dad why is the sky blue" - "Eat your ice cream Timmy".

because child has to get homework done to go to bed or because sibling spilled some milk and there is no time to teach number theory to toddler who is trying to understand 1 + 0

"That's an excellent question. Ask me again tomorrow."

right - the operative phrase in the OP's post is Sometimes. "Sometimes you don't want to do that." He did not make a categorical statement, but y'all are treating like he did.

Because there are 15 other children in the classroom, and they may not get anything out of the discussion - and instead, may miss out on something important for later lessons.

You tell the child that that is a good, but complicated question, and it will take time to give them the full answer. Then you can introduce them to the pieces as they can understand them, and as you have time.

I think the explanation is fairly simple. Grab two of the same item, I'm gonna use apples for this example.

First, hold one apple in each hand. Ask your child how many apples you have in one hand, them the other hand, then the total.

Then, hold two apples in one hand, with the other hand empty. Point out that you have two in one hand, and none, therefore zero, in the other. Have your child count the total number of apples, 2, and explain further how zero stands for no quantity. How when you have zero of something, you really have none.

I don't see the problem. Tell them their question is a good one, but one that's very difficult to answer while providing a simplified answer (if you have a toy in one hand, and nothing in the other and you put them together, how many toys do you have together?). Critical thinking skills can be taught in way that's age appropriate. What's important, or so I believe, is that young children are taught to be curious and that it's OK to ask questions and be skeptical. They won't always get an answer, but that doesn't mean asking was wrong.

Let me dust off my soap box. In my opinion "a journey down the rabbit hole" is exactly what kids need. It shows passion and interest in a topic. Something sorely lacking in today's education system. And, no, it doesn't mean that a child will "fall behind" academically in all other pursuits (common core is part of the problem here and not a solution). In the end every discipline of learning is inexorably entwined. As you approach each new, higher, level of learning about a topic you need to expand your ability to digest larger and more diverse sets of information. Which in turn requires deeper knowledge of language and mathematical disciplines. Snuffing out the inquisitive nature of children is, to me, one of the most heinous aspects of our education system.

That's a shame! I've had the privilege of having and hearing many great discussions with scientists and their answer is almost always quite humble on this, but perhaps requires a bit of lateral thinking to arrive at. The idea is that yes, life could take forms we haven't thought of or forms that are extremely different from the life we see on Earth, but two things stop that from being studied as much as we might hope given how fundamentally interesting the concept is.

First, we simply don't have evidence for such life, so we can't say that it does exist. We also can't say that it doesn't, and certainly not that it couldn't, but those are topics that make for good science fiction rather than incredibly fruitful topics for scientific inquiry. With that said there's certainly some really interesting stuff going on all the same! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenobiology

That leads to the second thing that's stopping it from being a heavily studied topic, which is that it's currently getting crowded out by the search for conventional life that happens to not be on Earth. The argument here goes 'yes, life elsewhere might not look like life here, but we know a heck of a lot more about life here than we do about how other, highly different life forms could work, so it makes more sense to focus our study on life that looks like the greater 'us' of earth-bound life.'

I've really enjoyed the discussions I've had on this topic, so I hope this was interesting to you. Sorry your teacher acted like a jerk!

There are a lot of people who shoot down science questions. In my experience, my questions have frequently (!) yielded results different from the normal. Now, as an adult entering middle agedness, I think less of such people and actively disassociate myself from them.

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