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mwengler comments on How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I agree I gained critical thinking skills throughout my childhood, much more aided by school than impeded. Science was science. I had a 5th grade science teacher who was an idiot, but when I argued with him over his stupidities, he didn't shut me down, he argued back. And all along I was learning that this was a description of the world and the world, not some authority, got the last say.
Not all kids are going to be as good at critical thinking as all other kids. This is not a failure of the education system, it is a failure of the human race. The best a system can do is add a delta in the right direction, on average, to most of us. My kids are pretty normal girls, but they are reasonable arguers and don't believe stupid stuff. This latter from training if I do say so myself. They think their opinions matter and so they put some effort in to them.
This is very atypical, from what I know. I could name several local high schools and at least two cégeps where not a single teacher would consistently respond with a "the world and reality have the last say" attitude or be willing to argue rather than use the Authority and That's How It Is cards. I know of only one place, a private college, where about 20% of teachers would be as reasonable as your education seems to have been.
The typical interaction between me and teachers during my own time in high school went more along the lines of:
Me: How does gravity work? Where does the seemingly-unlimited energy for the force come from?
(Physics) Teacher: Potential energy, due to the work that was put in raising the object to a certain altitude. *shows me a "standard" equation for calculating that*
Me: But that doesn't work! How does gravity first happen with planets and in space, then? And also, here, *points at some places where those equations are just completely disconnected from reality and explains why there's something missing*
Teacher: This is what is taught. You do what is taught, and it is the Right way. Don't ever mention this again.
No, I'm not exaggerating. This actually happened. It's only months later that I learned (by reading an arxiv physics paper, heh) that both of us were completely off the mark with regards to the (then-)current best understanding of how gravity works.
From what I gather, in general, most of north american education seems closer to my experience than to yours. This is horrible, if true (which I'm very convinced it is).
I've never encountered a teacher who was hostile like that, but many who were decidedly unhelpful.
There are things which are mysterious and difficult. There are things which even many experts in a field might not understand. I suppose my "good" attitude towards my teachers and my education may come from my appreciation of the facts that there is a lot to know and at the same time, no one knows close to everything about anything.
I am a physicist and I read your description above, and I can easily put myself in the place of the teacher. The total energy in the gravitational system is indeed conservative. Whether or not the total system in our actual universe is open or closed is a real question. How it got that way? Who knows how the universe started, even the big bang doesn't give a hint what was going on a second before the big bang started.
I can imagine telling a student who persisted in asking about these puzzles that they are indeed puzzles and what we could know is what we did know about the equations, and we were not going to use any more class time noticing they were puzzles, we were going to move on.
I'm sorry if that doesn't work for every student. I'm not sure though that there is anything that WILL work for every student.
This seems lucky, from what I've seen the standard is lower.