It would be wonderful if students had the opportunity to make scientific discoveries on their own, and being trained to think that way would greatly advance the rate of scientific progress.
While a nice idea, it’s hardly workable. There are roughly two types of science consumers: researchers and users. The users do not care what’s under the hood, they just need working tools. Engineering is an example. Making them discover the Newton’s laws instead of teaching how to apply them to design stable bridges is a waste of time.
Researchers build new tools and so have to understand how and why the existing tools work. This is a time-consuming process as it is (20+ years if you count all education levels including grad studies). Making people stumble through all the standard dead ends, while instructive, will likely make it so much longer. The current compromise is teaching some history of science while teaching science proper.
This is how Philosophy is already taught!
Indeed. And look where it led. The whole discipline appears largely useless to the outsiders, who hardly care what misinformed opinion some genius held 1000 years ago.
The current compromise isn’t working. A smidgen of history is taught, but usually in the mode of fact-memorization, not in the mode of exploration and discovery. The game method, whatever its value in philosophy, is certainly useful for scientists—it not only creates better (more dynamic, audacious, rigorous) thinkers in general, but also gives people a better sense of what science is and of why it is not ugly or dehumanizing. Teaching people arithmetic is of much greater value when successfully accompanied by a taught appreciation for and joy in arithmetic.
My recommendation: Ditch the ‘philosophy/science/history’ breakdown of courses, at least at the lower levels. If you’re trying to teach skills and good practices, you want to be able to draw on philosophical, scientific, and historical lessons and exercises as needed, rather than respecting the rather arbitrary academic divisions. Given low levels of long-term high school science class fact retention, there’s simply no excuse to not be incorporating ‘philosophical’ tricks (like those taught in the Sequences) and game-immersion at least as a mainstay of high school, whether or not we want to maintain that method at the higher levels.
And I don’t think this is only necessary for researchers. In some cases it’s even more important for users to be good scientists than for researchers to be, since our economic and political landscapes are shaped by the micro-decisions of the ‘users’.
Let me try to separate two different issues here, teaching science and teaching rational thought. The latter should indeed be taught better and to most people. The standard “critical thinking” curriculum is probably inadequate and largely out of date with the current leading edge, which is hardly surprising. Game immersion can be one of the tools used to teach this stuff. A successful student should then be able to apply their new rationality skills to their chosen vocation (and indeed to making a good choice of vocation), be it research or engineering, commerce or politics.
Teaching people arithmetic is of much greater value when successfully accompanied by a taught appreciation for and joy in arithmetic.
This is largely a typical mind fallacy. Plenty of people can find no joy in arithmetics, just like plenty of people find no joy in poetry, no matter how hard you make them.
And I don’t think this is only necessary for researchers. In some cases it’s even more important for users to be good scientists than for researchers to be, since our economic and political landscapes are shaped by the micro-decisions of the ‘users’.
Right, this is the new critical thinking curriculum part, unrelated to any particular science.
Let me try to separate two different issues here, teaching science and teaching rational thought. The latter should indeed be taught better and to most people. The standard “critical thinking” curriculum is probably inadequate and largely out of date with the current leading edge, which is hardly surprising.
And here’s why I try not to separate those two issues: (1) Teaching science and teaching rational thought are largely interdependent. You can’t do one wholly without the other. (2) ‘Rational thought’ and ‘critical thinking’ don’t generally get their own curricula in schools. So we need to sneak them into science classrooms, math classrooms, philosophy classrooms, history classrooms—wherever we can. Reminding ourselves of the real-world intersectionality, fuzziness, and interdependence of these fields helps us feel better about this pragmatic decision by intellectually justifying it; but what matters most is the pragmatics. Our field divisions are tools.
This is largely a typical mind fallacy. Plenty of people can find no joy in arithmetics, just like plenty of people find no joy in poetry, no matter how hard you make them.
The worry of typical-mind errors looms large on any generalized account, including a pessimistic one. To help combat that, I’ll make my background explicit. I largely had no interest in mathematical reasoning in primary and secondary schools; hence when I acquired that interest as a result of more engaging, imaginative, and ‘adventurey’ approaches to teaching and thinking, I concluded that there were probably lots of other students for whom mathematics could have been taught in a much more useful, personally involving way.
Perhaps those ‘lots of others’ are still a minority; no data exists specifically on how many people would acquire a love of arithmetic from a Perfectly Optimized Arithmetic course. But I’m inclined to think that underestimating people’s potential to become better lay-scientists, lay-mathematicians, and lay-philosophers at this stage has greater potential costs than overestimating it.
Are you using some definition of “working” narrow enough to exclude all the stable bridges, faster microchips, mathematical proofs &c. being produced by people who were taught the current compromise?
Yes, I am. If science education is working, then most students who take a science class should see a subsequent measurable long-term increase in scientific literacy, critical thinking skills, and general understanding. Our current way of teaching history may be having no positive effect even on our bridge-building, microchip-designing capacities. History as it’s currently taught is if anything a distraction from those elements that are producing technological progress.
While a nice idea, it’s hardly workable. There are roughly two types of science consumers: researchers and users. The users do not care what’s under the hood, they just need working tools. Engineering is an example. Making them discover the Newton’s laws instead of teaching how to apply them to design stable bridges is a waste of time. Researchers build new tools and so have to understand how and why the existing tools work. This is a time-consuming process as it is (20+ years if you count all education levels including grad studies). Making people stumble through all the standard dead ends, while instructive, will likely make it so much longer. The current compromise is teaching some history of science while teaching science proper.
Indeed. And look where it led. The whole discipline appears largely useless to the outsiders, who hardly care what misinformed opinion some genius held 1000 years ago.
The current compromise isn’t working. A smidgen of history is taught, but usually in the mode of fact-memorization, not in the mode of exploration and discovery. The game method, whatever its value in philosophy, is certainly useful for scientists—it not only creates better (more dynamic, audacious, rigorous) thinkers in general, but also gives people a better sense of what science is and of why it is not ugly or dehumanizing. Teaching people arithmetic is of much greater value when successfully accompanied by a taught appreciation for and joy in arithmetic.
My recommendation: Ditch the ‘philosophy/science/history’ breakdown of courses, at least at the lower levels. If you’re trying to teach skills and good practices, you want to be able to draw on philosophical, scientific, and historical lessons and exercises as needed, rather than respecting the rather arbitrary academic divisions. Given low levels of long-term high school science class fact retention, there’s simply no excuse to not be incorporating ‘philosophical’ tricks (like those taught in the Sequences) and game-immersion at least as a mainstay of high school, whether or not we want to maintain that method at the higher levels.
And I don’t think this is only necessary for researchers. In some cases it’s even more important for users to be good scientists than for researchers to be, since our economic and political landscapes are shaped by the micro-decisions of the ‘users’.
Let me try to separate two different issues here, teaching science and teaching rational thought. The latter should indeed be taught better and to most people. The standard “critical thinking” curriculum is probably inadequate and largely out of date with the current leading edge, which is hardly surprising. Game immersion can be one of the tools used to teach this stuff. A successful student should then be able to apply their new rationality skills to their chosen vocation (and indeed to making a good choice of vocation), be it research or engineering, commerce or politics.
This is largely a typical mind fallacy. Plenty of people can find no joy in arithmetics, just like plenty of people find no joy in poetry, no matter how hard you make them.
Right, this is the new critical thinking curriculum part, unrelated to any particular science.
And here’s why I try not to separate those two issues: (1) Teaching science and teaching rational thought are largely interdependent. You can’t do one wholly without the other. (2) ‘Rational thought’ and ‘critical thinking’ don’t generally get their own curricula in schools. So we need to sneak them into science classrooms, math classrooms, philosophy classrooms, history classrooms—wherever we can. Reminding ourselves of the real-world intersectionality, fuzziness, and interdependence of these fields helps us feel better about this pragmatic decision by intellectually justifying it; but what matters most is the pragmatics. Our field divisions are tools.
The worry of typical-mind errors looms large on any generalized account, including a pessimistic one. To help combat that, I’ll make my background explicit. I largely had no interest in mathematical reasoning in primary and secondary schools; hence when I acquired that interest as a result of more engaging, imaginative, and ‘adventurey’ approaches to teaching and thinking, I concluded that there were probably lots of other students for whom mathematics could have been taught in a much more useful, personally involving way.
Perhaps those ‘lots of others’ are still a minority; no data exists specifically on how many people would acquire a love of arithmetic from a Perfectly Optimized Arithmetic course. But I’m inclined to think that underestimating people’s potential to become better lay-scientists, lay-mathematicians, and lay-philosophers at this stage has greater potential costs than overestimating it.
Are you using some definition of “working” narrow enough to exclude all the stable bridges, faster microchips, mathematical proofs &c. being produced by people who were taught the current compromise?
Yes, I am. If science education is working, then most students who take a science class should see a subsequent measurable long-term increase in scientific literacy, critical thinking skills, and general understanding. Our current way of teaching history may be having no positive effect even on our bridge-building, microchip-designing capacities. History as it’s currently taught is if anything a distraction from those elements that are producing technological progress.