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KPier comments on Teenage Rationalists and Changing Your Mind - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (31)
I would agree that teaching elementary schoolers proper "rationality" is probably impossible, but I think there would be a lot of benefits to encouraging curiosity and interest in the world generally. When I was 12, my science teacher gave us all pendulums and told us to figure out how they worked. Everyone was annoyed at him - we'd plodded dutifully through the public school system for years by then, and everyone knew that the teacher had to tell you what variables to test, and which one was independent, and which one was dependent. We ended up testing lots of different stuff: how is the period of a pendulum affected by string length? weight? starting position? In the end, I learned a lot about pendulums - and even more about how to do science when you don't even know what you're testing. I think most 12 year old could benefit from a lesson like that.
At least some high school kids could learn (and understand) everything on LessWrong. I'll focus in my next few posts on how to tell which ones, and how to reach them.
In 3rd or 4th grade, we learned about biases, how to think creatively, and how to remember things. We were also taught how to do social negotiations (for instance, convincing your parents to buy you a new toy), and a number of other skills.
I was seriously irked when I hit 7th grade, and we did some logic puzzles as a group, and no one but me could reach the correct conclusions. At this point in my life I've concluded that said 3rd grade class may well represent the most rational group I've encountered outside of LessWrong.
So, while you might not be able to teach everything, I think you seriously under-estimate how teachable a kid is if you get to them before they've been ruined by the public school system. Doubly so if you have teachers that bother to teach their students how to learn about a pendulum before forcing them to deal with one (I applaud the teacher for trying but, eesh, that just doesn't strike me as an effective lesson for a regular class of students)
We were a honors class in a gifted school, so once we got over our initial shock it worked pretty well. But you may be right this isn't a viable approach for your average student. Your third grade class is impressive; do you remember what they covered? Was it curriculum or initiative on the part of your teacher?
It was a special program, run by three teachers, who got to set their own curriculum, so class that as you will. It was absolutely wonderful compared to public school. Aside from what I mentioned above, we covered all the usual subjects, and a lot of random ones - we learned how to play the stock market for our economics lessons, we went and saw bridges to learn about them, and we did a lot of arts and crafts.