Concerning #4, I more or less agree with this. Here in this country (USA) students are woefully inadequate in general concerning their scientific reasoning skills as well as with critical thinking in general. I know because I teach college. Some of these students coming out of our high schools are brilliant, some of them are the opposite of brilliant, and the rest are stuck in an intellectual mire!
One caveat to item #4 though: there are entire disciplines within the scientific fields featuring work that cannot be directly "tested" (otherwise known as validated through experimentation). These generally fall under the heading of natural, possibly environmental, sciences: astronomy, geology, astrophysics, geophysics, oceanography, quantum mechanics, wildlife biology, etc. Many other disciplines feature completely observational components (forestry, wildlife biology, marine biology) although there are experiments that can be done within the observational milieu as: case by case basis.
Concerning these fields of scientific endeavor, education in mathematical modeling is apropos. Modeling is the method by which we learn about phenomenon that cannot be directly experimented upon or either observed. Why can't students learn about modeling in high school or even middle school? This should be done in my opinion.
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Concerning #4, I more or less agree with this. Here in this country (USA) students are woefully inadequate in general concerning their scientific reasoning skills as well as with critical thinking in general. I know because I teach college. Some of these students coming out of our high schools are brilliant, some of them are the opposite of brilliant, and the rest are stuck in an intellectual mire! One caveat to item #4 though: there are entire disciplines within the scientific fields featuring work that cannot be directly "tested" (otherwise known as validated through experimentation). These generally fall under the heading of natural, possibly environmental, sciences: astronomy, geology, astrophysics, geophysics, oceanography, quantum mechanics, wildlife biology, etc. Many other disciplines feature completely observational components (forestry, wildlife biology, marine biology) although there are experiments that can be done within the observational milieu as: case by case basis. Concerning these fields of scientific endeavor, education in mathematical modeling is apropos. Modeling is the method by which we learn about phenomenon that cannot be directly experimented upon or either observed. Why can't students learn about modeling in high school or even middle school? This should be done in my opinion.