Comment

Comment on Recognizing fake news now a required subject in California schools

tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

it would be much better if you taught generic critical thinking

That’s pretty much what you get from an English (or history) class in HS. Can you extract information from a text, can you synthesize information from multiple sources, can you interpret what the text means and support your interpretation based on evidence, can you understand motivations and perspectives of characters, and recognize information from unreliable narrators, etc.

Sometimes when a problem becomes immediate enough, teaching the general case isn’t enough. Not sure whether we’ve reached that point, but there’s a lot of general teaching that people complain isn’t specific enough. “Why don’t they teach how to do taxes?”-- because they teach math and following directions, and it theoretically shouldn’t be more complicated than that.

source

Sort:hotnew top

aidan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Except education is not general, it is hyperfocused on topics that lead into higher education.

source
- tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I can agree with that to a certain extent, but how is math not general? How is understanding characters from a book not general?
  
  source
  - aidan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    how is math not general? How is understanding characters from a book not general?
    
    The general math and reading skills I learned stopped at 8th grade.
    
    I didn’t need to write a 10 page paper on 3D trig for general math. Nor how to transpose a matrix.
    
    I didn’t need to learn about, well actually in English I didn’t learn anything, we just kept doing the same imagery fan theorizing from 8th grade to graduation.
    
    source
    tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I didn’t need to write a 10 page paper on 3D trig for general math. Nor how to transpose a matrix.
    
    I don’t think that’s what most people learn in terms of math. If you’re not going to college you probably don’t need trig or calc, but a basic understanding of algebra and geometry is useful IMO.
    
    we just kept doing the same imagery fan theorizing from 8th grade to graduation.
    
    Sounds like a problem with a shitty school or poor teachers, rather than a defect of English lit education in general.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
    SCB@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I didn’t need to learn about, well actually in English I didn’t learn anything
    
    I found why you think school doesn’t teach things that school definitely teaches.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments