Not quite as extreme, but I had a science teacher (iirc, in junior high (that’s 7th through 9th grade) who said very firmly that the sun is not a star, the sun is the sun.
Could you please elaborate on why you regard it as such? I can think of a couple of things to take away from it that would be frightening (that people will repeat “earth, fire, wind, and water” as easily as they will “carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and fluoride”, for instance), but I feel like I must be missing something because I wasn’t expecting that kind of response.
Part of it is that. But it also that someone could be so divorced from modern science that it wouldn’t occur to them that earth varies in nature. Or that they hadn’t heard that water is hydrogen and oxygen. Or if they have heard that, they didn’t try to reconcile it at all with the claim about water being elemental. The notion that there are people out there who are that uncritical not for any motivated reason (as some religious individuals are) but out of simply humdrum everyday lack of thinking. And that such people would then go on to teach other people?
I guess I shouldn’t have found this as disturbing as I did. But I generally have a low opinion of humans, and it seems like no matter how cynical or pessimistic I am, I’m sill surprised by their behavior.
That is one of the most deeply fascinating and frightening anecdotes I have ever heard on LW.
I had a science teacher in about 5th grade who told us that
She was surprised and skeptical when I told her that cells were made of atoms.
Not quite as extreme, but I had a science teacher (iirc, in junior high (that’s 7th through 9th grade) who said very firmly that the sun is not a star, the sun is the sun.
Could you please elaborate on why you regard it as such? I can think of a couple of things to take away from it that would be frightening (that people will repeat “earth, fire, wind, and water” as easily as they will “carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and fluoride”, for instance), but I feel like I must be missing something because I wasn’t expecting that kind of response.
Part of it is that. But it also that someone could be so divorced from modern science that it wouldn’t occur to them that earth varies in nature. Or that they hadn’t heard that water is hydrogen and oxygen. Or if they have heard that, they didn’t try to reconcile it at all with the claim about water being elemental. The notion that there are people out there who are that uncritical not for any motivated reason (as some religious individuals are) but out of simply humdrum everyday lack of thinking. And that such people would then go on to teach other people?
I guess I shouldn’t have found this as disturbing as I did. But I generally have a low opinion of humans, and it seems like no matter how cynical or pessimistic I am, I’m sill surprised by their behavior.