I was all in on chemistry in highschool. But then they bait-and-switched. Instead of educating on chemistry broadly, they trained us to be drones of the petrochemical industry.

That was merely the first time (of 3 times) when the education system bait-and-switched, going from one course, promising to extend and deepen the education in the following year, only to replace it with training on some narrow specific portion that I was disinterested in.

After renouncing formal education, I learned more in my first year alone with an internet connection and a library card than I had in the entire 14 years of formal education prior.

Would be nice if the education system really were an education system.

Stay curious‼️ 🤔

I found by high school the kids who said that (that hadn't dropped out) moved onto a different argument by that age

Honestly, I know it ruins the joke, but I don't think there's as much overlap between the top and bottom groups as one may suspect

The "do your own research" people need to have it explained to them that even experts in their respective fields aren't automatically capable of parsing scientific literature. A family doctor with 50 years experience who prescribes antidepressants every day will have no deep understanding of what any particular scientific peer reviewed study on SSRIs is telling them. They need a grounding in statistics more than anything else, which most people just don't have. So the idea that a non-educated, non-scientist can read peer reviewed studies and come away from them with some sort of understanding of the issue is the thing that needs to be highlighted, preferably in high school science class (earlier, frankly). A willingness to slog through scientific papers in pursuit of deeper knowledge is admirable, but is dangerously misguided without proper training. I don't even mean training in the specific science, but just in how to speak the language of peer reviewed studies more generally. It's very much its own discipline.

I want someone to ask Joe Rogan what 'regression to the mean' means. I want someone to ask him what a 'standard deviation' is and how to apply the concept. I don't want to know what papers he's read, because you could read 50 true scientific papers a day on one topic and still have no idea what the current scientific consensus is on said topic, absent the requisite training. You'll almost certainly come away from it with a very wrong but very confident belief. Dunning-Kruger on steroids.

If we want children to learn these things, we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes. I'm not saying we should get rid of science classes, but the people who are saying these stupid things did actually take science classes in school.

We desperately need to teach classes that are specific. I learned a lot about problem solving from math classes, but I was shocked when I tutored other kids, and they only learned the math, but had no idea how to approach problems. And I don't mean just word problems, but literally even if you just give them multiple equations and variables.

My tutoring often went like this: "I can't solve this!" "What information to they give you? What answer do they want? What can you do with the stuff that they've given you to get the answer?" And then they get the answer. Then repeat. Literally no math involved in the tutoring for math class.

So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I'll call empathy. By "empathy", I mean the ability to imagine yourself in another person's shoes so that you can predict why they're doing what they're doing. It's essential for detecting misinformation because you need to trust somebody at some point, so you need to understand how to tell who is more likely to be trustworthy. I also think we should teach children meditation techniques.

I'm going to be that guy about GMO crops. If we were modifying them to be drought resistant or need less water, I'd be all for it. Instead, what we modify them for is to be "roundup ready" meaning that glyphosate can be sprayed liberally on it without killing it making weeding the field much easier. I am not concerned about the GMO crop, but I am concerned with all my food being covered in Roundup.

I think equally important as teaching these things to begin with is letting students know when they're being taught a simplified model, and that serious academic discourse of the subject is still evolving and/or involves much more nuance (which is pretty much always). some people who do pay attention in science classes nonetheless think that what they learned is gospel and never re-examine it, or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge when said nuance is relevant because it seems to contradict the simplified model they've cemented in their brain as the whole truth. the kind of people who say things like "I know there's two genders because I learned it in high school biology" and apparently never considered why there would be collegiate and post-graduate studies on biology and gender (or why those are two entirely different fields of study) if we all already learned everything there is to know in high school.

To be fair, most schools give those classes only out of obligation. Doing dumb calculations of mols and atomic masses in high school is definitely teaching kids to ask "why the fuck am I even doing this?"

There are something like 10 million students attending Christian school and the like, and another 5 million or so being home schooled.

They don't really believe in the scientific method and critical thinking, in general. At least in my experience as a student of a Christian school. I had no idea.

Ignorance is piss

And billionaires love people like that because it keeps the most obsessive of us focused away from the greed.

I don't agree with this. The stuff written by, for example, the "vaccines cause autism" people can sound as sophisticated and authoritative as any textbook. A high-school education isn't going to help someone judge it according to its merits. Thus the problem is a collapse of trust in authority rather than a lack of basic knowledge, because ultimately an ordinary person can only decide to trust the scientific consensus without meaningfully verifying it.

The sad thing is those people did take those classes.

Real talk: those “boring” science classes aren’t about memorizing facts — they teach you how to spot bad claims and check sources. That skill pays off forever.

'Leave no child behind' was/is a bad policy. You can't call yourself a major league player when you're still hitting from the tee.