2 Points
First, formal education is badly broken, and the more poeple have of it, the less they seem to see it. What is the usefulness of a headfull of facts? Education is obsessed with teaching us a certain set of facts and a certain worldview and falls woefully short on teaching people to think for themselves. How important is it that somebody know a list of facts including what percentage of the earth is water and how long it takes the earth to go around the sun. If you're in an applicable field I think you should know. If you're an average man on the street, you have wasted whatever time it took you to learn that. It won't affect where you live, what kind of apartment or house you live in, what kind of car you drive, what you choose to believe about anything, whether or not you can balance a bank account, whether or not you have honor and integrity, whether or not you can treat those around you with love & respect.
There's a long list of people that have their high school diploma as well as college, university, graduate school, etc etc, and have learned none of the basic life skills that are key to a "fulfilled" life.
And then people are horrified at the number of people that don't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun?...?
Secondly, I am absolutely astounded at the number of people on here that cling to evolutionary theory as a form of sacred cow. They seem to allow for no errors, no holes. They seem to believe that it has been "proved" beyond a shadow of a doubt. Wow. It gets better. They equate it with good science. In fact, it seems to be king bee of science. Going back to education, I remember being taught in the first grade that science has to be duplicated to be proved true. I know I live in Canada, but have I missed some big event over the last several centuries of science? I've heard of theories regarding the fossil record. I can even buy into micro evolution as it has been proved. But that "educated" people are absolutely positively convinced on sequences of events that nobody witnessed are hard for me to fathom. I work in IT and see myself and other techs have theories that are proved wrong all the time in computer related issues which in the end are far less complicated than the origin of life... especially as studied millions/billions of years after the fact. And then they smugly assume that they are on the moral high ground as they look down on those lesser individuals who dare to differ in belief or opinion when their own belief is far from proven.
Sounds like they took a page from Apple's iTunes and/or Quicktime Software on the PC. How many pc's have I seen that started with the Quicktime plugin and then ended up with Itunes and Safari only a matter of months later. (I often get asked int hese situations, What's Safari?)
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2 Points First, formal education is badly broken, and the more poeple have of it, the less they seem to see it. What is the usefulness of a headfull of facts? Education is obsessed with teaching us a certain set of facts and a certain worldview and falls woefully short on teaching people to think for themselves. How important is it that somebody know a list of facts including what percentage of the earth is water and how long it takes the earth to go around the sun. If you're in an applicable field I think you should know. If you're an average man on the street, you have wasted whatever time it took you to learn that. It won't affect where you live, what kind of apartment or house you live in, what kind of car you drive, what you choose to believe about anything, whether or not you can balance a bank account, whether or not you have honor and integrity, whether or not you can treat those around you with love & respect. There's a long list of people that have their high school diploma as well as college, university, graduate school, etc etc, and have learned none of the basic life skills that are key to a "fulfilled" life. And then people are horrified at the number of people that don't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun? ...?
Secondly, I am absolutely astounded at the number of people on here that cling to evolutionary theory as a form of sacred cow. They seem to allow for no errors, no holes. They seem to believe that it has been "proved" beyond a shadow of a doubt. Wow. It gets better. They equate it with good science. In fact, it seems to be king bee of science. Going back to education, I remember being taught in the first grade that science has to be duplicated to be proved true. I know I live in Canada, but have I missed some big event over the last several centuries of science? I've heard of theories regarding the fossil record. I can even buy into micro evolution as it has been proved. But that "educated" people are absolutely positively convinced on sequences of events that nobody witnessed are hard for me to fathom. I work in IT and see myself and other techs have theories that are proved wrong all the time in computer related issues which in the end are far less complicated than the origin of life... especially as studied millions/billions of years after the fact. And then they smugly assume that they are on the moral high ground as they look down on those lesser individuals who dare to differ in belief or opinion when their own belief is far from proven.
Sounds like they took a page from Apple's iTunes and/or Quicktime Software on the PC. How many pc's have I seen that started with the Quicktime plugin and then ended up with Itunes and Safari only a matter of months later. (I often get asked int hese situations, What's Safari?)