Beats me

Math: "when are we ever gonna use any of this in real life!?"

Later: "why didn't they teach us how taxes work!?"

To be fair, these are very different skill sets. To this date, I've yet to have an urgent need to get the area under a curve.
FreeTaxUSA takes care of calculating my taxes. It only tells me well after I have purchased something in telling me what kind of records I should keep if I want to claim that thing for a deduction.
I could have used the latter more than calculus.
- They really do ought to teach economics as part of compulsory education
- Honestly, there should be a yearly class like english, math and science for "general education". Like how to do taxes, basic first aid, how to apply for jobs/make a resume, what to expect when you rent an apartment, how and when you should seek therapy (and what it's like), how to manage stress in a healthy manner, and very basic cooking.
  I'm betting it's not implemented because it's incredibly hard to standardize and test this kind of stuff. But a general ed class would be nice for these types of things that don't easily fit into another class.
  Calculus is useful, but it's significantly less useful in an average person's daily life than knowing why their resume is getting instantly tossed in the trash at every single place they apply to.
Taxes don't require even High School level Math, much less something like trigonometry or high-level algebra.
On the other hand, personal finance should absolutely be mandatory in schools.
- In my school personal finance was something everyone was required to take their freshman year.
- Taxes don't require even High School level Math, much less something like trigonometry or high-level algebra.
  You overestimate the minimum level of math required to graduate high school (in the United States).
  When I went to school (about 20 years ago, at a suburban school in the North East), to graduate, you need to pass 6 semesters of math. You could achieve that by taking:
  Algebra 1 (2 semesters): very basic algebra
  Geometry (2 semesters): not sure if the remedial level covers proofs or it is just memorizing the names of shapes and how to calculate the area of them
  2 math electives: very basic classes like Problem Solving, a class that teaches students how to read word problems and apply basic math skills to solve them
Instead they taught us how to use graphing calculators to draw shapes and lines
A skill I only later used when developing a game jam engine using c++ for the windows terminal
- So true! So much of my my schooling, specifically mathematics, has only ever been useful for programming. A few years ago I used Pythagoreans theorym to make sure my hole I dug for my patio had perfect 90° angles, and that is honestly the only time I've ever used anything beyond basic math outside programming.
They did teach us basic tax in year 7 in Australia, donno if they still do

Actually one of the best courses I've taken against this kinda thing was a "Logic" course in the philosophy track in college that had a huge section devoted to how media tries to manipulate a person. Not typical high school stuff but maybe it should be, and fully up to date for social media. There's a practical course for the 21st century.

I've had a long ongoing rant/debate (not really a debate because we all pretty much agree with each other), that logic, and critical thinking should be the focus of earlier education. Sure, focus on the skills everyone needs, like writing and such, but when you get to highschool, we should be focusing more on core logic and critical thinking skills.
Teach a person a thing, and they'll know it... maybe. Teach someone to think, and they'll be able to figure out anything.
- Let me first say i agree but also let me be little bit hopefully constructively critical.
  There is something called (backwards) rationalism.
  ... a defense mechanism in which apparent logical reasons are given to justify behavior that is motivated by unconscious instinctual impulses. ..
  Rationalism also uses logic but not in sense as e.g. math of physic does. So logic is not enough in this broad sense.
  So I think that basic science is the way to go in the early education stages alongside with teaching of accepting self critique and mistakes. Showing that everyone can be wrong and can become better at the thing by fixing their mistakes.
  So in other words philosophy could make sense in high schools to some degree.
Corporate psychology...
When I was in 3rd grade, I had a teacher who did a week-long lesson about recognizing propoganda. She talked about how talking or displaying something a certain way can alter how you think about it.
Looking back, this short propoganda course for 3rd graders wasn't in any official lesson plan, wasn't in a textbook, and may not have been on the up-and-up with the school.
- It may have been, it's relatively common for something like this to be included in coverage of Vietnam and the cold war. Current events related blocks are also often put in social studies curriculum and propaganda is a often a suggested tie-in.
  While your teacher sounds like they went above and beyond, they probably weren't working against the system. And that's coming from a burned out ex-teacher. We have issues in our schools but for the most part curriculum designers are trying to help. For every terrible Florida-like headline depicting a leap backwards there are many steps forward taken under the radar

We had these classes and people are still stupid. Your point?

There’s a whole culture in America celebrating carelessness, doing poorly in school, and idolizing people who got successful doing nothing except breaking the rules
- Back in the 80s and 90s this was already a thing. Being a “rebel” and being “too cool for school.” If you did too well at school you were a nerd and that had some social stigma.
  Maybe today it is worse with social media and online gaming.
People are stupid because they didn't (and weren't forced to) learn in these classes.
- Oh they were forced, that’s the issue. That ensures knowledge exits your brain as soon as the exam is over.
If these classes aren't required then we would have an Idiocracy (even more so than what we currently have)
They cheated to get grades.
People have always been stupid, but not like this. Not what we have going on today
- Because internet didn't existed back then to congregate and enable people to say whatever they want.
  Before you could be that stupid, but probably would be the only one in your neighborhood so any stupid thoughts would be kept to yourself until you eventually move on, but now if you think earth is shaped like a half eaten donnut, you bet your ass you will find a community of other weirdos with that same belief and they will feed themselves more stupidness and become louder and louder.
  Honestly I'm one example myself, when I was a teenager back in the 90s/2000s I really liked those Japanese emo style music(Visual kei), but since no one else around me had ever heard about it and no one was interested on it I had no one to talk about it, then I just moved on, but if it was today I have no idea what kind of creepy teen I would have become, honestly for me it was a blessing haha

Do you think that the people who believe in this bullshit wouldn't believe it if they were provided evidence or something?

They don't work on evidence. They work on vibes. They believe what they believe because they want to, not because it makes sense.

That's why it's so hard to argue with these idiots. You can't logic a dumbass out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.

Well said.
They don't work on evidence. They work on vibes. They believe what they believe because they want to, not because it makes sense.
This is the big one. They start with a conclusion then go on a scavenger hunt for anything that agrees with it. And as we all know, you can find anything on the Internet.
And where a more reasonable person might see how hard it is to find a reputable source that supports your claim and deduce that maybe the information isn't out there because the theory is wrong... instead these people run to the conclusion of "if the information isn't readily available out there to support my idea, it's because it's being suppressed in a big conspiracy!".
These are usually the same people for whom the government is somehow both completely inept, bumbling, and stupid while also being capable of carrying out the most widespread, comprehensive, flawless conspiracy ever imagined.
It's hard to say, because we're talking about a hypothetical where they actually learned this stuff as kids. If they properly understood the material, maybe they'd end up being logical and sensible.
As they are now though, yeah, it's a lost cause.
- It can also depend individually and on their upbringing.
Sounds like arguing with a religious person.
No, you have to meet people where they are. You have to question their position until it becomes untenable and they give up. It never feels like a victory, but you have to hope that eventually it will make a difference...
- Honestly that is exactly the wrong way to do that. It will never work to question a position of someone so entrenched. If you are really interested in this look up cult deprogramming.
- You have to question their position until it becomes untenable and they give up.
  That's called "sea lioning" now, though.
- You can do that, and I wish you luck
  If you argue with an idiot they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Honestly? I've found that people on both sides of these arguments can be people who aren't working with evidence, but are basing it off of "vibes", or even hearsay.
- It really depends on what you are talking about. Arguments from the other (non fully vibes) side change depending on if they are arguing a tankie, antivaxxer, flat earther, or other conspiracy theorist... et cetera.

I remember reading this article and getting very upset and my ex not understanding why. "Let them believe what they want to believe, it doesn't affect you," she said. "These people vote," I said.

Skip to now and I'm pretty confident that I had the correct response.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth

They've graduated and now have professional misinformation degree.
~~Here is their graduation project: https://www.yahoo.com/video/resurfaced-reddit-clip-shows-flat-003114234.html (found random article on the web)~~
Here is their graduation project: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/v8q0o7/flatearther_accidentally_proves_the_earth_is/
- Article about a video that doesn't include the video or a link to the mentioned Reddit post. What a terrible article; here's the Reddit post.

Would have been more accurate with “your a sheep.”

Clearly the preferred lexicon is "ur"
- I can't really explain why but using the wrong "your" looks far worse to me than just typing "ur". The "ur" people know what they're about and I kinda respect it tbh. They're not trying to impress anyone

Yep. This is a thing. Students will learn a lesson best when the student understands the value of the lesson to them in their lives.

This is one of the six basic principles of learning, it's called the Principle of Readiness. You can read all about it in the Aviation Instructor's Handbook alongside other smash hits as the principle of exercise (practice makes perfect) or the principle of primacy (first impressions matter). It's that basic.

Establishing that value, giving the students the context and reason the lesson is valuable to the students is the teacher's responsibility. And I noticed that most teachers forget this somewhere around the 7th grade. Way too many of my teachers answered "Why do we need to learn this?" with "Because it's required to get your diploma."

Practice makes perfect is a lie. At best it's 99.(9)%. The rest is a stubbed toe.
- It is effectively a lie; "Practice" only makes perfect--or improvement at all--when there is some sort of feedback mechanism to judge performance. It is possible to practice something incorrectly, build the habit of doing it incorrectly, and then you will perform it incorrectly. This is why I see the math teacher habit of sending students home with lengthy assignments of problems to work to be taken up and graded like a quiz is bad practice; give students time to practice and build skill before you start punishing poor performance.

I mean, “those” people believe in a hidden cabal who controls everything and feeds lies to the population, teaching those things in school doesn’t really change much when they’re just going to disregard them as “fake propaganda”.

There's definitely a cabal feeding lies to them, but they're not very hidden, and they're the very people they think are telling the truth.
No, good education will prevent them from falling for conspiracy theories and lies in the first place.
- I think some hours of “critical thinking” could do wonders. Stuff like teaching to check sources, how to recognize fake news and stuff.
  But most schools don’t even teach IT so I’ve lost hope at this point.

Took me a bit too long to figure out the following: school isn't supposed to only teach you specific things; it's supposed to teach you how to learn.

And it doesn't stop at high school. A Bachelor's in a specific field is only partly about the facts and concepts, and the rest is about how to research and evaluate sources in that field. Does someone with a Bachelor's in Computer Science know how to implement Shellsort right off the bat from memory? Not unless they did it in a whiteboard interview, and fuck those things. No, they know how to look it up and implement it in a specific language, and can probably figure out its big-O complexity.
Knowing what a good source looks like is a skill, and must be learned.
- Agree, but there are still some fields that are taught in detail at university (instead of "here's the basics, figure out the rest by yourself") - like medicine for example.

#BUT JESUS SAYS....

You don't need biology, chemistry, etc. You just need to listen to the people who do, instead of people who have no qualifications whatsoever.

Taking High School biology is never going to give you the knowledge necessary to understand a research paper.

Or you can read history books about the myriad of diseases we literally cured with vaccines.

The less you know the easier you are to fool. No, HS biology won't be enough to understand a complex research paper. But it will be enough to know the guy talking about using light or bleach to kill covid is a fucking idiot.
Come to think of it... Actually I took HS bio classes and never again after but I gained enough understanding from reading trustworthy sources to be able to read quite a few covid paper's abstracts and understand (they weren't that difficult honestly) and stay better informed than most folks.
I think the real key is learning how to learn. How to Pick up things here and there. How to evaluate sources.
The people who are anti-vax (at least online) are to a person ignorant about so much-- science, virology, immunology, statistics, logic, etc. You can't even discuss the topic without them until they go to school and learn a boatload of stuff.
- But then Dunning Kruger comes into it. How many people cling to the "there are only two genders because I learned that in basic biology" without understanding that more advanced biology shows that it is more complicated than that.
  Not saying there shouldn't be math and science in school, I think there should be for sure, just pointing out the other side of teaching just a basic level of something.

*sheeple

based

I had a teacher that said: “at school you’re not here to learn about history and science, you’re here to learn how to learn”

GMOs are unsafe

Actual usage of GMOs IRL is mostly to promote plant resistance to RoundUp (glyphosate) which is definitely unsafe.

When people list off positions they disagree with like this, they always miss the mark on one or two...

Yes. I have real concerns around GMOs in terms of genetic patents and danger to food security via reduced cultivar diversity. I don't think GMOs are all-bad, but not all concerns about them belong in the same bucket together.

Which kids said this specifically?

Huh , so those who were forced to learn propaganda as impressionable children are then as duscerning and wise adults are no longer able to research, study and come to other conclusions? Huh.

Science isn't propaganda.

Dude, you don't believe science. All you do is listen to TV saying what "scientists have said". Don't act like you believe climate change because you read hundreds of peer reviewed papers and built an informed opinion based on stats. The most you did was a Google search, if ever, and then read from a website from a government-funded institution that wouldn't get funding if it said the "wrong thing".

Spare us your condescension. You're just in a cult 🫡

Lmao I kept waiting for the punchline as I read this comment and it never arrived. 10/10 love the projection
Do you know how research works? Nobody knows everything, and research very much assumes that fact.
Take modern computers. Do you think there exists a single person that knows how they work in entirety? From the most advanced software down to the intricacies of how electrons move through semi-conductors?
No. There doesn't. And yet we have computers, what gives?
Science is more than just knowing everything there is in a field. It's a collaborative effort. It's works that build upon other works. It's "we have done the hard stuff described in this paper that you can read, but our conclusion is..." and you operate based on that conclusion, if you don't need to know the full details.. and few people really need to.
You are completely clueless about how modern science, which drives and builds our entire world, functions.
It's really hard to tell what's sarcasm in this comment and what, if anything, isn't.
Edit: never mind, reread it and realized you're just a crazy person.
Do you deny climate change exists?
- Said like a Class-A Cultist.
  "Are you one of us?"
"I don't believe in repeated observations, peer review, and constant updates based on new information all performed almost for free by underpaid academics. Instead I've based my beliefs on memes and infotainment paid for by billionaires and religious fanatics who have a stated desire to see the world end. I'm not in a cult though."
Please leave Lemmy. We don't need the likes of you.
If you have a superior method of assimilating information? Please do tell.
it's hilarious how none of the comments address the point of the post itself, instead all just attack the person with made up snarky retorts for going against the echochamber. Reddit lives on in our hearts
- Yep. Exactly. I looked at the responses, and all I could think is "I can spend my whole day responding to all these strawmans from a brainwashed crowd, or move on with my life". I believe I chose wisely 😄

Well, GMOs are almost exclusively used for extreme mass production of herbicide-resistant corn and soy, for biofuels and cattle feed. All of that is disastrous for the environment (and humans), so yes: GMO bad.

Sure, but that doesn't make GMOs inherently bad. There are many, many amazing uses for GMOs such as golden rice, but unfortunately the ones using GMOs just happen to be the same ones who put profit before anything else. If anything, people should be pushing for GMOs that are naturally resistant to pests and infections so that they don't need as much harmful shit sprayed on them.
Source on it being disasyetous for the environment and humans?
Meat farming is likely SIGNIFICANTLY worse for the environment and even that is not disasterous by itself outside of local biomes (though it is one of the easiest things to reduce besides green electricity)
- Funny enough, part of the reason meat farming is so harmful is because so much land is used to grow feed for cattle (that's why huge chunks of the Amazon are regularly burned down illegally- to use that land to grow cattle feed). The pesticides and herbicides and artificial fertilizer are also pretty bad for their local environments. None of that is specific to GMO crops though.
- Maybe it's not all bad, but there is no doubt that the main function of GMO is to resist herbicides, it seems logical to me, that using more, and more powerful herbicides is probably harmful to the environment. Also it is most likely same herbicides are harmful to the food chain that eat the resulting products, humans included. Which is why they are banned in EU.
- 2 seconds of Googling would have given you for example this article https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/ but there are plenty more.
  Fun fact: I learned about this stuff in University in the 90s already, where professors were big fans (of and too often working for) companies like Monsanto and Bayer and even then knew about the risks of the system.
You can absolutely argue that some of the practices are bad without saying the science as a whole is bad.
Wow mass downvote for stating an undisputed truth.
In a perfect world GMO would be to the benefit of all, including the environment. But unfortunately they are instead used to make more money on monopolized ecospheres around specific products. Allowing the use of herbicides the plants wouldn't otherwise tolerate.
- But GMOs themselves are not bad, its capitalists leeching off the rest of us.
  GMOs will be necessary to reduce the environmental impact of humans, because they need less space and resources, saving more for the environment.
GMO are banned in Europe for a reason
- Not banned, but yes regulated. And the vast majority of the feed supply for raising cattle etc are imported GMO crops.
- They aren't exactly banned but you have to label than as such and no company wants to do that. But yes, all that for a reason
- Mainly the reason is that people are idiots