What is well-educated to you?

[wildernesse]

lisarea mentioned that a person should come out of a k12 ed with a basic level of competence, and I agree. I wondered what our definitions of that would be. What would this look like to you? What should the average freshly graduated high schooler know? I think that there would be skills and knowledge involved, but do you agree?

[Angakuk]

Math: Basic math skills including, at a minimum, algebra and geometry.

Language Arts: Basic knowledge of their native language's structure, rules and literature. Familiarity with at least one language other than their native language. The ability to write an essay and a term paper and give an oral presentation.

History: Basic knowledge about world history and the history of their own country.

Political Science / Civics: A functional understanding of how their government works and the obligations of citizenship.

Science: Basic physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology and biology. They should know the difference between; an atom and molecule, a liquid and a solid, a star and a planet, igeneous and metamorphic rock and demonstrate the ability to disect a frog or a fetal pig.

Geography: Basic knowledge about other countries and how to locate them on a map. They should understand the difference between; an ocean and a lake, a mountain and valley, a desert and a forest and their ass and a hole in the ground.

Social Studies: Exposure, in some fashion, to a culture other than the one they live in.

Arts: Basic art history & appreciation, experience with at least one musical instrument and participation in at least one dramatic production.

Home Ec. & Industrial Arts: They should have baked at least one cake, changed the oil in a car or built a bookcase.

Health & Hygene: At a minimum they should know what things they need to do to stay healthy, what actions to take if they get sick and how babby is formed.

Technology: The should be able to display competence in using basic word processing, data base and spreadsheet software.

Drivers Ed.: The should be able to pass a driving test.

Economics: At a minimum they should be able to balance a checkbook and make change.

I probably left out some important stuff, but that is all I have for now.

[The Lone Ranger]

That's an excellent question, and I'm sure that answers will vary widely. Here are some things that immediately spring to mind.

I would put the ability to do basic mathematical operations pretty high up there on what every educated person should know. At the very least (the very least), I'd expect an "educated" person to be able to calculate percentages, make change, and understand what fractions are.

And yet, I've more than once had the experience of encountering a clerk who literally could not make change if the cash register was broken, and on more than one occasion I've had students tell me that they have no idea how to calculate percentages -- or even a clear idea of "percent" actually means.


To be a properly-educated member of U.S. society, I think that a person should have at least some familiarity with classic literature and how it has shaped our society. I'm not talking about a detailed understanding of Oedipus Rex. I'm talking about having some idea of who Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were, and why Huckleberry Finn, in particular, was such an important book. Ditto for Uncle Tom's Cabin. And for that matter, the Bible. How many Christians have you met who've never actually read the Bible, and have practically no knowledge of what it actually says?


Speaking of which, some basic understanding of U.S. and World History. Growing up North Carolina, I was frequently appalled at how many people I encountered who had no idea at all what the U.S. Civil War was about, and who honestly seemed to believe that the North had attacked the freedom-loving South, and for no reason at all other than that "they hated us for our freedom," or some such thing. Not to mention that I've known an awful lot of [white] Southerners who seem to honestly believe that slavery was an entirely benign institution, that the slaves spent their days dancing and singing, and thanking their lucky stars that they had escaped Africa and been lucky enough to have come to the U.S.

And, of course, if you mention the Civil Rights Movement, you tend to get blank, uncomprehending stares.



I think that every educated person should be able to read a graph. Maybe it's because I do it so often that it just seems like it should be intuitive, but I'm always amazed that I have to teach college students how to make and how to read a graph -- and that so many of them claim that it's hard.


I think that every educated person should have some basic idea of what science is as well as a working understanding of the major scientific theories.

I only half-jokingly tell my students that if any one of them ever writes something along the lines of "I don't believe in evolution because it's only a theory" I will fail them right then and there -- because they've just proved that they don't have the slightest understanding of what they're talking about.

Along those lines, I think that every educated person should have a working understanding of evolutionary theory (it's not difficult, for goodness' sake!), and why it's universally accepted by the scientific community as the best explanation for the unity and diversity of life.

Along the same lines, I think that every educated person should have some idea of the age of the Earth and of the Universe as a whole, and a rough idea of how life has changed over the past 4 billion years or so.

Every educated person should at least know what atoms are, and have some idea of how and why they combine to make molecules.


Every educated person should have a basic working understanding of the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.


Every educated person should have at least a basic understanding of human anatomy and physiology. I'm not talking about a detailed understanding of the Krebs cycle -- I'm talking about knowing approximately where the stomach is, and what it does.



But perhaps most importantly, I think that every educated person should have a working knowledge of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Because, let's face it; if you understand (and apply) hypothetico-deductive reasoning, and if you have even a smidgen of curiosity about the world around you, you can cut through an awful lot of the bullshit with which we're constantly assaulted.

[thedoc]

The 3 "R's" Readin', Ritein' un Rithmitic.

[lisarea]

Technology: The should be able to display competence in using basic word processing, data base and spreadsheet software.

I think they need a lot more than that. At the very minimum, they should also have a decent command of how computers work, at least some minimal programming experience, and internet research and media literacy:

So-called Digital Natives Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/so-called_digital_natives_not_media_savvy_new_study_shows.php)

And as long as we're on ReadWriteWeb, may as well cite this well-known illustration (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php) of the extent of the problem:


Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here and become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook right now, click here. For future reference, type "facebook.com" into your browser address bar or enter "facebook" into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser.

Computing isn't some niche subject anymore. You really do need to have some at least functional knowledge of how to use computers and the internet to be a grownup now.

Also, the math one is a very big deal, and I can tell you right now where the problem originates: A lot of math teachers DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO MATH. They think doing math consists of memorizing a specific formula for every type of problem.

Kids don't just need to be able to do math problems. They need to genuinely understand how math works and be able to figure a problem out in different ways, rather than simply memorizing formulas the way a lot of them are taught.

Also, they should have some familiarity with major world religions and their origins--not just Christianity.

[naturalist.atheist]

Knowing the difference between shit and Shinola is key to being well educated.

Shit and Shinola - YouTube

[godfry n. glad]

Hmm...As well as the 'basics' listed out above, I think students should leave the K-12 system with a clear system of how to continue to learn. The ability to not only read and write, but compose hypotheses, ask critical questions, and conduct tests, take measurements, make observations, and interpret their results.

[Joshua Adams]

Something no one has mentioned as part of a proper education is probability and statistics. Humans' poor statistical intuition is legendary, and steers them wrong in so many contexts, that this is arguably the most important mathematical skill to learn. Unfortunately, teaching people the subject doesn't, as far as I know, help train their intuition; the answers they produce to various questions just don't make use of their knowledge even if they have it, for the most part. But I think it's likely that part of the problem is how late the subject is introduced. It's often said that education is what remains after you've forgotten everything you've learned in school. Well, some things are so deeply drilled into me that I'm sure I'll never forget them. For example, basic arithmetic, algebra, and maybe even calculus. I only retain those skills because I learned them and then used them for years all the time in later classes.

Statistics I only learned as a senior in college, and I must admit I don't remember too much about it. I probably can't calculate a confidence interval without checking my textbook, although I might be able to reason it out. I've lost a lot of other mathematical skills, like solving differential equations, as well, because I only used them for a short time and in limited ways before finishing my education. I don't want to make it sound like all I did was memorize formulas, because that's not the case, but I couldn't have understood these things all that deeply if they faded from memory so easily.

My understanding is that experts do gain the ability to quickly, automatically call forth their knowledge when needed, so training people's statistical judgment should be possible, as long as the knowledge is learned early and used consistently enough to become second nature.

The problem is that, just as I've forgotten statistics and other skills, it seems almost inevitable that people will forget a large amount of knowledge acquired in school in all subjects. While it's all well and good to say we need people to know about biology, astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry, geography, history, etc, etc, etc, it just doesn't seem promising that they would remember it all. Unless the goal is to have people only know really rudimentary amounts of stuff. In which case, you can presumably get that much to stick by teaching it and then building on it for an extended period of time. But all the rest of that knowledge will evaporate over time, leaving nothing but the very basics that get reinforced continuously.

It seems rather inefficient, and doesn't strike me as a solid grounding for college education, but I'm not sure there's an alternative with the current system in place, and with the limitations on people's memory. I'm kind of dismayed by how little actually gets done in a school year, and I'd like to think the time could be used more effectively, but I'm not sure if it really can in practice.

What I'd really like to see is for accurate, in-depth, comprehensive information on any academic subject to be available for free and at everyone's fingertips, so schools could focus on teaching skills like reading, reasoning, experimentation, information retrieval, and programming, rather than facts. Something like Wikipedia, but more reliable and even in quality, and without all the fluff; there have been projects with this goal in mind, like Scholarpedia and Citizendium, but they don't have very much content.

[LadyShea]

lisarea mentioned that a person should come out of a k12 ed with a basic level of competence, and I agree. I wondered what our definitions of that would be. What would this look like to you? What should the average freshly graduated high schooler know? I think that there would be skills and knowledge involved, but do you agree?

How did I miss this??

In my opinion all high school graduates should know the following stuff and or have the following skills

1. The US political and legal systems, How do they fucking work? IOW, comprehensive civics
2. The ability to comprehend a news article...which I hear less than half of all adult Americans can do. This requires extensive reading comprehension exercises, vocabulary building, and critical reading practice
3. Resources. How to find and analyze information and vet sources
4. Scientific methodology
5. Enough basic math manage one's household finances, feed oneself, and comprehend and compare common financial products like loans, credit cards, checking accounts, etc.
6. The human body. What does it consist of and what does what and how can it be harmed and benefited.

[lisarea]

My understanding is that experts do gain the ability to quickly, automatically call forth their knowledge when needed, so training people's statistical judgment should be possible, as long as the knowledge is learned early and used consistently enough to become second nature.

Statistics could probably fall under a general 'critical thinking' sort of umbrella. That is, you don't need to have an advanced understanding of statistics so much as you need to read and understand simple charts and logic, and look skeptically at data.

When my son was really little, I'd show him tricky use of charts and statistics and stuff in the newspapers and we'd lol at them. He's really smart, granted, but he could pick that stuff out like a pro even when he was a tiny little man; so it is something people can learn at a young age, and make it a part of their overall approach to interpreting information.


The problem is that, just as I've forgotten statistics and other skills, it seems almost inevitable that people will forget a large amount of knowledge acquired in school in all subjects. While it's all well and good to say we need people to know about biology, astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry, geography, history, etc, etc, etc, it just doesn't seem promising that they would remember it all. Unless the goal is to have people only know really rudimentary amounts of stuff. In which case, you can presumably get that much to stick by teaching it and then building on it for an extended period of time. But all the rest of that knowledge will evaporate over time, leaving nothing but the very basics that get reinforced continuously.

I have forgotten shittons of stuff, too. I've always thought of it in terms that, if you have to look something up enough times, you'll eventually remember it. So you are going to remember the things you use most frequently; and I'm A-OK with forgetting the things I don't use.

The reason I think it's valuable to learn them is that, while you might forget the details, you remember that they exist. I don't remember very many natural taxonomies, for example; but I know they exist, and I would be able to find them even without the internet (hooray for the internet, though).

It goes to the Dunning Kreuger effect, and the learning progression from ignorant/uninformed to aware/uninformed to informed. Without a basic introduction to and some experience studying a subject, you don't have a concept of how much you don't know. You can't go looking for that information again if you don't know it exists. If you work or study in any kind of specialized field, you're probably familiar with the perception that your field is either bullshit entirely, or that you do some ridiculously simplistic thing. Everyone who works with computers is a programmer; linguists are either professional polyglots or some kind of super-prescriptivists; scientists are all basically chemists or maybe mad experimental surgeons. Stuff like that.

So even if you don't specifically remember the details of everything you learned in high school or college or whatever, if you have a decent, well-rounded education, you have some notion of just how ignorant you are, and you have some clue at least as to how you'd go about finding that information if you need it. A whole lot of people don't have that, and it's a real disadvantage.

[Joshua Adams]

Statistics could probably fall under a general 'critical thinking' sort of umbrella. That is, you don't need to have an advanced understanding of statistics so much as you need to read and understand simple charts and logic, and look skeptically at data. I agree that advanced concepts are not necessary. Off the top of my head, I would only consider a few things essential because people's minds violate them systematically, and they need that beaten out of them. First of all, people should understand confidence intervals at least qualitatively. People seem to not get that the more narrow and precise you get, the less certain you are entitled to be. Like, half the time the only thing you can predict with near-certainty is some uselessly wide range of possibilities, but I don't think people are very understanding of that, and expect someone that knows what they are talking about to be able to give high precision, high confidence estimates and predictions. More informally, we need to drill it into people that "I don't know" is a thing smart people say, whereas they have it all backwards usually.

The other thing I would like everyone to know is Bayes' Theorem, so that people understand to take into account base rates and use specific information at hand to adjust from there when estimating probabilities. It is almost irresistible to forget entirely about the base rates and just base your judgment on the information in front of you, and even knowing about the correct way to do it doesn't really fix that, which is why I think it needs to be taught early and used often. The math is super simple, so there's really no good reason why it isn't already, unless you count the government/lizard-man conspiracy to keep us dumb.

Technically, both of those things are pretty elementary results, and might be considered just common sense or critical thinking, but for whatever reason people are super biased against thinking correctly about those things, so they deserve special attention, IMO.

I have forgotten shittons of stuff, too. I've always thought of it in terms that, if you have to look something up enough times, you'll eventually remember it. So you are going to remember the things you use most frequently; and I'm A-OK with forgetting the things I don't use.

The reason I think it's valuable to learn them is that, while you might forget the details, you remember that they exist. I don't remember very many natural taxonomies, for example; but I know they exist, and I would be able to find them even without the internet (hooray for the internet, though).That is a very good point. I guess I don't really think of that because I'm not usually inclined to dismiss fields that I don't know a lot about, but I guess that is something a lot of people do.

As I alluded to above, it would be nice if there were more emphasis on teaching people how to find information rather than cramming it into people's heads. I figure that is why we have computers in the first place, and memorizing a bunch of shit is going to be very quaint and obsolete soon if it isn't already.

[lisarea]

As I alluded to above, it would be nice if there were more emphasis on teaching people how to find information rather than cramming it into people's heads. I figure that is why we have computers in the first place, and memorizing a bunch of shit is going to be very quaint and obsolete soon if it isn't already.

You have a really good point there. Research skills are even more important now than before. It's even more pointless now to memorize things when you can effectively carry the whole internet in your pocket. We should be outsourcing the menial stuff to automatons in preparation for the singularity, and using our brains for higher order stuff than that.

And it goes back to my inchoate rage in another thread about that teenager I know whose 'internet skills' class consists entirely of lessons on how to use shitty and sometimes obsolete web apps, without even touching on how to do an effective web search or other research skills.

If you've got a curious and open-minded kid, all she really needs is a little general direction, a computer, and some basic research skills.

[LadyShea]

That's why I focused on stuff like critical reading and resources (which can be the media, the government, Internet, humans, liberry!). I don't know much like in my head alla time, but I am a badass at finding information. I was good at it before the Internet too, and it has served me very well.

[LadyShea]

The other thing I would like everyone to know is Bayes' Theorem, so that people understand to take into account base rates and use specific information at hand to adjust from there when estimating probabilities. It is almost irresistible to forget entirely about the base rates and just base your judgment on the information in front of you, and even knowing about the correct way to do it doesn't really fix that, which is why I think it needs to be taught early and used often. The math is super simple, so there's really no good reason why it isn't already, unless you count the government/lizard-man conspiracy to keep us dumb.

Can you explain this out a bit for me? With some hypothetical real life stuff?

At first glance it seems along the lines of what seebs was trying to get across about that book Thinking: Fast and Slow

[Dragar]

The other thing I would like everyone to know is Bayes' Theorem, so that people understand to take into account base rates and use specific information at hand to adjust from there when estimating probabilities. It is almost irresistible to forget entirely about the base rates and just base your judgment on the information in front of you, and even knowing about the correct way to do it doesn't really fix that, which is why I think it needs to be taught early and used often. The math is super simple, so there's really no good reason why it isn't already, unless you count the government/lizard-man conspiracy to keep us dumb.

Can you explain this out a bit for me? With some hypothetical real life stuff?

At first glance it seems along the lines of what seebs was trying to get across about that book Thinking: Fast and Slow

I go to the hospital, and get tested for a rare form of cancer (it's so rare that only a few people worldwide ever have it).

The test is astonishingly accurate. It gets the answer right 99.999% of the time. A mere 1 in a 100,000 times it is wrong (I think I worked that out right, but I typed this in a rush!).

Unfortunately for me, the test says I have cancer. Uh-oh. Should I be worried?

It's tempting to say yes, but as Joshua Adams is pointing out, the base rates are important. What I should be doing is going into the room before the test with a base rate of how likely I have to have that disease (one in ten billion or so) and updating that assessment by the results of the test. Given that the test is super accurate, it certainly bumps up the odds I have cancer by a hefty amount. But the odds were pretty small beforehand, so should I be worried?

Bayes' Theorem lets you work out precisely how to relate these two pieces of information (the test result, and the prior knowledge of how likely I am to have the disease).

In a more traditional approach to probability (frequentism, as opposed to Bayesian), the correct solution is found by comparing two distinct probabilities (the numerical calculation is left as an exercise to the reader):

1. I don't have the disease (incredibly likely) and the test is wrong (very unlikely).

2. I have have the disease (incredibly unlikely) and the test is right (very likely).

Note that this is going to be very different to just interpreting the test results according to the machine's accuracy.

This is the sort of thing that is very counter-intuitive to a lot of people, and very important across a wide range of fields and every-day life (not least medical testing!).

[Joshua Adams]

Can you explain this out a bit for me? With some hypothetical real life stuff?

At first glance it seems along the lines of what seebs was trying to get across about that book Thinking: Fast and SlowKahneman does talk about base rate neglect and Bayes's Theorem briefly. I believe the example he uses is an experiment where you read a few sentences about someone's personality and then are asked to guess what his major in college was. The description is of an analytical, introverted type guy who doesn't care for other people too much. And, of course, if you had to guess based on that, you'd figure he's an engineer or something similar.

If you conclude that, you're making exactly the same mistake as supposing the test means you have cancer. Even if, for the sake of argument, those personality traits tend to be evidence that he's an engineer, you have to take into account the fact that there aren't that many engineering majors. Given the raw numbers, there are more sperglords in the humanities than in the engineering departments, simply because there are more people in the humanities, period.

It ties in to some recurring themes in the book (a lot of the thinking errors Kahneman calls attention to are interrelated, it seems). For example, he points out over and over that people tend to substitute easy questions for hard ones without noticing, so in this case you tend to substitute "Which stereotype does the guy fit?" instead of actually doing the somewhat more cumbersome calculation involving base rates and such. He also points out the way people tend to construct and believe coherent stories solely from the information in front of them, without giving sufficient weight to that information's reliability or allowing for unknowns. As he says, What you see is all there is (WYSIATI). It's easy to see how the latter will cause us to violate Bayes left and right, as base rates are the kind of thing that rarely present themselves explicitly for our notice.

I'm not sure if teaching people the correct way to reason about such situations will actually recalibrate their intuition. Maybe the best that can be hoped for is that people will generate the intuitive answer, and then afterwards think "Hey, I just fucked up, let me look up the base rates and actually figure out the right answer." As yet another thing Kahneman points out repeatedly, humans are extremely lazy about doing that type of reflective correction; we tend to accept what our System 1 tells us, and it's not a reliable source of information. But, since he includes certain expert intuitions as part of System 1, I suppose that means implies that intuitions can be acquired and maybe this is one of them.

I don't want to derail, so if you are interested in discussing anything more specific to the book, I guess ask it in its thread rather than here.

[LadyShea]

Thanks, I was just wondering if what you were discussing was in that book.

[ceptimus]

Statistics are counter-intuitive more often than not.

For example, nearly everyone has more than the average number of legs.

Most people have two legs; a few people have only one or no legs; no one has three or more legs; so the average number of legs per person is 1.999-something and nearly everyone has more legs than that.

[Ymir's blood]

It seems that there are people who have been born with more than one set of legs, though if so it isn't likely to counteract the number of people with less than two.

[One for Sorrow]

I'm going to add, "Knowing how to iron cotton dress shirts" to the list because it has been the bane of my existence today.

Seriously, though, relatively simple things like hemming, sewing a button back on, basic cooking skills, folding a fitted sheet, etc are a very important part of becoming a functional human being.

And I lack some of them. :sadcheer:

[Gonzo]

How to question authority.

[Angakuk]

and survive.

[LadyShea]

How to question authority.

That was definitely on the curriculum for those of us with hippy parents.

[wei yau]

...as long as the authority you question is not your parents.

Now finish your vegetables and you can watch one episode of iCarly

[Kyuss Apollo]

At minimum, high school graduates should be able to recite all 50 states in a quarter of a second.

[Gonzo]

Also, critical reading, which is sort of the same thing. Someone should be able to read something and explain what they don't like about it, rather than dismiss it.

I guess, literacy, above all else. If you can teach people to read well, they should be able to learn everything else on their own.

[Angakuk]

Except for all that important esoteric knowledge that is handed down orally from master to student. Reading will totally not help with that stuff, Grasshopper.

[Gonzo]

It totally won't help?

I don't think totally means what you think it means, Master Kuk. :blank:

[Angakuk]

It totally does, dude.

[Gonzo]

You see what I did there? I questioned your authority and criticized your vocabulary. I'm smrt.

[Angakuk]

Yes, and in doing so you demonstrated both your ignorance of contemporary idiom and your lack of respect for your elders and your betters. You are indeed smart, as in smart-ass. Questioning authority is all well and good, but it should always be carried out with the proper degree of humility, not to say obsequiousness.

[Gonzo]

:lol:

[LadyShea]

If you can teach people to read well, they should be able to learn everything else on their own.

I've said similar very many times...but, it's less true than I once thought. Some people learn differently and need to see a visual demo, or do something hands on.

[Gonzo]

I was adding to what's been said already, not trying to reduce anyone else's points.

[LadyShea]

And I am just letting thoughts pour out my fingers because my views are changing rapidly on accounta small child in the house. Sorry.

[ShottleBop]

. . . Something like Wikipedia, but more reliable and even in quality, and without all the fluff; there have been projects with this goal in mind, like Scholarpedia and Citizendium, but they don't have very much content.

There's always Conservapedia (http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page), which strives to be consistent in content. Just take a look at their support for the Question Evolution! Campaign (http://questionevolution.blogspot.com/2012/05/creation-and-earth-history-museum-and.html).

I wasn't even aware that there was a "Creation and Earth History Museum" (http://creationsd.org/) just over the hill, in Santee (barely 7 miles from home), devoted to reducing the number of people who believe in that unsupportable "Darwinism" religion. I'll have to drag my uppity science-teacher daughter over there and get her some proper learnin'.

[One for Sorrow]

That's awesome, ShottleBop. Maybe you can even get her this science book. (http://i.imgur.com/FnQWf.jpg) Super fun excerpt here. (http://imgur.com/GuGWl)

(And that, LS, is what I thought of homeschoolers. So I'm glad I stalked your interests and learned they aren't all like that. ;) )

[Gonzo]

Respect is sort of an undervalued thing in America. Not sure if that should be taught by school or parents or both. Then again, I think there are a lot of attempts at it that fall flat. Just comparing our populace to the Japanese and you'll know what I mean. It actually gets through to people there, and I suppose it has to do with having a culture where rock stars and celebrities are made out to be important and glamorous and when you get older you see they're really not all that special or amazing.

[ImGod]

A basic course on logic and debate would be good. Students should be required to wear those dog shock collars and get zapped everytime they make a logical fallacy when debating or writing. It would clean up a lot of stupid thrown around in TV/Internet/Family Gatherings.

[lisarea]

I guess I've just seen too many people tossing around names of fallacies all ass backwards and stuff without really fully understanding what makes them fallacious and in what circumstances. There's something about a basic knowledge of logic and debate that all too often ends up being counterproductive, like it gives people a false confidence that makes them

People really do need to learn critical thinking, but I'm not sure that informal logic is something you can really learn in isolation.

[ImGod]

Logic courses may not be the answer, but some course that specifically requires you to back up your opinion with stuff not orifice extracted. We had to write formal papers with footynotes and bibliographies and such to prove we weren't making stuff up. I'd imagine the internet has provided all sorts of teacher headaches when it comes to references.

Maybe they could get by with enforcing a basic standard in all the other classes or at least let them go back to mocking stupid.

[lisarea]

Critical thinking should be an integral part to almost every subject. And as far as I know, kids still have to write formal papers and cite their sources in school.

But coincidentally, just last night, my friend and her kid* were over, and I had to prove that my stupid friend was wrong about something**, so I pulled up Wikipedia. And the kid gasped, as though I'd just whipped out my personal Necronomicon or something, and confidently informed me that Wikipedia is always wrong because just anyone can edit it.

Turns out, of course, his teachers told him that. Now, I totally get that teachers don't want kids citing Wikipedia in their papers and all, and I also understand why. That kid didn't, though, and I'm pretty sure his teachers don't either. They just knew it could be unreliable, so they just put up a big old "Bullshit" flag on it without actually understanding why, or bothering to learn or explain how to use it effectively.

And that's exactly the sort of problem that I see so often with people who have some glancing familiarity with informal logic. For a super-egregious example, there used to be a moderator on IIDB who would call "slippery slope fallacy" on any argument that proposed a cause and effect; and who thought that "the exception proves the rule" meant that if you came up with something that conflicted with a theory, that confirmed the theory's accuracy.

That's an extreme example--that being why I still remember it--but the phenomenon happens all the time. It's very very common for people to just adopt this sort of shallow, uninformed skepticism about anything they don't immediately understand or agree with, and think that makes them critical thinkers. And that sort of wrongness tends to be a lot more intractable than plain old gullibility.

Isolated informal logic instruction seems to just give people an arsenal of protective terminology to bolster their existing cognitive biases, rather than actually teaching people to apply critical thinking skills.

* This is the same kid from that horrible, aggressively bad Komputer Klass I komplained about here before.

** God, like I just got all confused and misremembered Keith Carradine's horrible little weasel face, all eating sandwiches like a fucking squirrel and shit on Dexter. Oh, yeah, probably some totally different guy! JESUS.

[ImGod]

When I was a kid, our family encyclopedia set got yearly updates, so I know even hard facts and stuff need updating periodically. Encyclopedia Britannica was the internet to a kid stuck out on the farm in the 70s and 80s. Shit from all over the world, right at your fingertips.

I was lucky in college, because I went into engineering. Engineers don't need critical thinking as much as linear thinking, good visual-spatial skills, and a decent memory. So I was able to overcome the handicap of coming from a generally stupid family and ease myself into some of the critical thinking skills required in other classes. When my extended family gets together, I set a bag of rocks in the middle to help raise the average IQ in the room.

More often than not, my wife, brother and I sit in the corner and talk amoungst ourselves. Our 11 and 13 year old kid's have started joining us when they get scared. It seems "Are you smater than a 5th grader?" is not a game show but a rhetorical question in my family.

[Waluigi]

It's very very common for people to just adopt this sort of shallow, uninformed skepticism about anything they don't immediately understand or agree with, and think that makes them critical thinkers.
I think you've expressed very clearly and concisely something that I've been trying to articulate for a long time.

You've also touched on a key reason why I rarely engage in discussions with people online.

I wonder if this is another manifestation of the "not invented here" syndrome. It's like... if I didn't already reach that conclusion, if I didn't already know about that point of view, it must not be worth knowing in detail.

[lisarea]

YES. I call that "Everything I don't understand is bullshit." Don't get modern art? Obviously, everyone who says they do is a poseur because my three year old could do that. Not a wine drinker? Phonies, all talking about peppery undertones and stuff. Don't know how research works? Scientists are just studying fruit flies and making glow in the dark dogs for the hell of it!

And I do think things are getting a lot worse in that regard. The Young People of Today spend a whole lot of time on social media. That horrible Komputer Klass that kid was taking was pretty much all on using social media and creating content for social media. And social media tends toward high churn, low barrier to entry content. For something to trend, it has to appeal to the largest possible number of people as quickly as possible, so everyone understands it right away, and then they have like thirty seconds to weigh in with their opinion or joke or whatever.

So the most popular content almost always has to play into some common and easily recognized prejudice or some other facile observation. Like memes, which are just easily recognized stereotypes made into strawmen. You can't trend on Twitter or Reddit or Pinterest or Facebook with a long form or long-running discussion that builds on establishing understanding. It's all "Don't you hate it when an old lady pays for her groceries with a check?" and then everyone really fast weighs in with a joke or some outrageous anecdote. And if you take a day to research or ponder something, by the time you get back to it, the conversation is dead.

So, for another example, you can get a lot of traction saying something like, "You need a license to catch a fish or drive a car! You should also have to get a license to breed!" and people will happily agree with that sentiment, but they don't devote the attention span to actually learn why government mandated eugenics is not such a good idea. And if you cite Hitler, the 'skeptics' among them will dismiss this as a Godwinning (which, I'll add, most people don't know what Godwin's Law even is). Literally all you'd need to do to understand what's wrong with that idea is to stop and think it through for twenty seconds, and imagine how such a thing might be implemented; but people don't even do that.

And for reals, I do get it. People really do deal with a lot of information overload, so they need to pare down what they're going to expend their attention on. And the easiest way to do that is to dismiss a whole lot of stuff. Which is cool. Nobody can be expected to understand every topic out there. But a whole lot of people who get really engaged in social media seem to think that they have to weigh in on everything in order to qualify for their participation award, so they resort to the "Oh, I am skeptical of this claim!" without ever really articulating why in their own words.

People don't need to learn new terminology or formulas for evaluating arguments. They just need to stop and think before they form or express an opinion, and they need to learn to be OK with not expressing opinions on things before they actually understand them.

[ImGod]

These posts adequately expresses my problem with social media (and a bunch o people in general).

Half the time I was bored with people's lives, the other half I was thinking to myself, "You're a fucking idiot" and the third half of the time people push links to games, random shit they liked, and slide shows of the family trip all over MY WALL. I don't hang out with "friends" like this in real life, so why spent hours a day stalking people on Facebook hoping they might look my way every once and a while. Social media is a prepackaged way to a distill out and present the real life character flaws in people. I know several people in real life and on social media that aren't really that much alike. The ones that are the same in real life and social media tend well toward the sucky side in both. Sociela media has to be some sort of massive university psychological research study into the dark recesses of our minds.

It's one thing if you're drunk saying silly crap back and forth or getting emo (Shitfacedbook would be much more fun IMHO), talking to your shrink, or whatever. It's another to do it all day long and in public.

I'd end up saying inappropriately stupid things to people because they were doing the same, thinking it was all one big jokefest. But they actually believed what they posted or that their personal lives were uber interesting. I realized people took social media seriously, likes were a matter of pride, and unfriending a person you vaguely knew 20 years prior was like shooting them in the heart. So rather then kill off my "friends" I stopped logging in.

I would say there should be a class on how not to be so self-absorbed and boring, but I think that's probably already a side affect of well-educated.

This post exceeded the tweet character limit and would be a bitch to type on my mobile device social media app so is therefore by default an in-depth analysis.

[LadyShea]

And really, critical thinking and skeptical analysis of claims should be at least a familiar thing before one starts school. I've talked to Kiddo about advertising, like he sees a commercial and we go look up reviews and find out it's shit or whatever. Sure, right now he takes it too far to the "all commercials are selling shit" end of things, but for a 6yo that is better than the alternative.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, you can teach kids to question and consider all the things p. easily, so why are so many people not doing it?

[Waluigi]

Don't get modern art? Obviously, everyone who says they do is a poseur because my three year old could do that. Not a wine drinker? Phonies, all talking about peppery undertones and stuff. Don't know how research works? Scientists are just studying fruit flies and making glow in the dark dogs for the hell of it!
One common theme in all the examples you cite: contempt for authority.

We don't respect our institutions anymore (education, government, business, etc.) because we've been burned by them too many times. We live in a time with no clear respect for facts and authority, where every opinion is as valid as the next, even if some opinions are formed with considerable research and thought while others are pulled out of one's ass.

I've read some books that touch on these themes... Why We Hate Us by Dick Meyer, Doubt is Their Product by David Michaels, and The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby all come to mind.

[LadyShea]

I dunno, I hold authority in contempt kinda by default, but I mostly don't have that "everything that I don't understand/care about/know about is bullshit" mentality.

I think a helluva lot of people simply have very strong but totally uninformed opinions about things, and if they don't have an opinion on it then it must not matter at all so they form a strong opinion about its total worthlessness.

[Qingdai]

I think I just found out why I love this forum.

The ability to research and then evaluate that research is a dying art.

[Ymir's blood]

Back in my Internet Arguing Days, I learned/decided that it was generally better not to name a fallacy even if you were certain that someone had committed it. Use an understanding of the fallacy to explain why they were wrong but don't actually mention the fallacy itself. One, if you couldn't explain without calling out the name, it probably didn't fit. Second, naming the name tended to lead to an argument about whether or not such and such was fallacy name and not about whether such and such was wrong.