this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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Ok. So. Here’s my take.
No high schooler is EVER gonna pay even the slightest bit of attention if we incorporate a “taxes and accounting” class. No shot.
We learn certain general subjects like this in science mainly to learn critical thinking, analytical/logical reasoning skills, how to apply the scientific method (which, yes, can come in handy in many areas of life besides science).
Ask any teacher who's taught it and they'll confirm. People just like to bullshit. They lie about not being taught things they were taught too. I'll bet many had a lesson that went over tax brackets etc and they just ignored it
Most of the people I know that complain about not being taught "real life skills" are absolute dumbasses that would have refused to pay attention anyway.
I had also been told this about something before where the guy had poured water on a flat top grill. As it was boiling off be was like "man this is real life right here, if school taught things like this I'd have paid attention" and I was like they did idiot you just didn't pay attention that's literally just water boiling smh lol
Given your previous claim:
What makes you think that they'd be any more likely to pay attention to any other subject matter?
Maybe they don't, which is why most of what they teach is useless in 99% of every day life. 🤷🏻♂️
But, to me, that doesn't really explain why it would make sense to teach things that wouldn't be useful.
We had a class like that but it was an elective. It had things like how to balance a checkbook. While I don’t use checks very often I do understand how to manage it. Think I’ve had the same checkbook for 15-20 years. Went over basic tax stuff and interest for loans and whatnot.
I attended public school in a town my parents specifically chose for the schools though. City taxes are crazy because of it but I didn’t realize how much that mattered until I got into college.
Having to peer grade anything in college was excruciating. Even simple stuff like the standard five paragraph essay was a nightmare. The start was something that kinda introduced the topic. Then the conclusion was next followed by a wall of text ramblings that was supposed to be the body?…ugh. So the five paragraph essay was now three and incoherent. The spelling was usually awful as well and It was typed. Like how is that even possible? The computers totally had spell check back then.
Assuming that some high schoolers aren't going to pay attention to the lesson, wouldn't it still be better to at least try to teach something that has real life practical use rather than something that doesn't? At least the people who do pay attention will gain something useful — it doesn't make much sense to me to reduce the overall usefulness of what's taught simply because some may not pay attention.
Well, I am unsure if I agree with that, as my business management class, which had pretty ordinary coursework about it without really anything 'exciting', had a vast majority of students paying tons of attention and actually learning, and half of the class was the stereotypical lazy bum students who acted macho and popular even though everyone hated them.
Although, the people who failed that class failed to the most catastrophic degree, as everyone else was well above passing, certain students got an overall score from 10 to 30% in total for all assessments.
I'm not too sure how standard this type of class is, so the success rate of accounting or other classes could be highly varied
Ah yes learning critical thinking
Here is a series of indisputable statements.
Mitochondria are membrane-bound organelles found in most eukaryotic cells, and they are often referred to as the 'powerhouses of the cell' because they generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell's primary energy currency, through a process called oxidative phosphorylation. They have a double-membrane structure, with the inner membrane folded into cristae to increase surface area for energy production. Mitochondria contain their own circular DNA, which is separate from the nuclear DNA, and this allows them to produce some of their own proteins. They are believed to have originated from a symbiotic relationship between ancient eukaryotic cells and free-living prokaryotes, a theory known as the endosymbiotic theory. In addition to energy production, mitochondria play roles in cell signaling, apoptosis (programmed cell death), and calcium homeostasis.
Have you learned critical thinking yet?
I'm not sure how you think critical thinking works. Do you have some sort of magical logic flow that doesn't requiere some base understanding of facts?
Guy trying to sell quartz as "energy enhancing crystals" -> no understanding as to how body energy works -> might be legit, let's give it a try
Guy trying to sell quartz as "energy enhancing crystals" -> knowing that available body energy is dictated by ATP and has nothing to do with crystals -> this smells like a scam
Critical thinking is about being able to apply knowledge of what you know to what you are currently being told. You need some basis of real, provable facts for it, which is why if you had a bio course, you also likely had some lab component to it as well.
Sure, I hear you cry, but all of that information isn't something I need to know basically ever! Well, you're correct, but a fun thing about learning is that the deeper you cut into a subject, the more you remember. You probably wouldn't remember much if the entire unit only said "mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell".
And doing these deep cuts to reinforce the basics of understanding work. There is a reason that "mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" is a meme, and it's because everyone remembers that part, not nessessarily the part that they have their DNA that is always inherented from your mother and is referred to as mDNA.
I hope this helps you to think critically against the continued push against critical thinking, particularly to the claim that what you learned in school has nothing to do with doing it.
The mitoncondria meme is a byword for useless knowledge.
Learning a series of science trivia will simply not teach you the structure of critical thinking.
Reciting a series of science fact is not a critical thinking activity, it is rote memorization of trivia.
Yes, effective critical thinking relies on a wealth of knowledge, but critical thinking is a set of applied skills about finding "your truth". These skills simply cannot be acquired by downloading a series of establishmebt vetted facts.
If anything, critical thinking would be better learned by teaching flat earth theory, without any disclaimer. You needs exposure to real false information at a minimum.
You need to learn healthy distrust of authorities. Something I have not encoutered once in 15 years of dreadful, boring and painful schooling.
I see what you're getting at, and you're not wrong to think about how the lessons we teach kids from the minds and skills we want them to have. There's positives and negatives to the liberal arts education, and it could be said that it is just as much of what is left out then what is kept in. The choice to teach about mitochondria and not the Krebs Cycle is odd from a scientific perspective, but if you know about endosymbiosis then it's a lot harder to accept that all organisms appeared independently a few millennia ago. But once you view a liberal arts education from this perspective then you see these biases everywhere. For example, how many world history classes talk about the Tamil Kings, or the Warring States period of China? It's a lot easier to other a region you don't know the history of.
So we have to ask, what purpose should education serve? What knowledge and skills should we expect people to have by the time they reach adulthood? Add what is the best way to disseminate those?
The stated goal of high school level education is to create well roubded individuals. But individuals that know about mitochondria but not how fucked up the tax code is and how to survive all the finance predators? That know about Christopher Columbus but not how to change the tires on their cars ? That is not a well rounded to me. You have to know how to live before learning about biology trivia.