Re: Why do so many kids do badly with math and science?

cjorp@xxxxxxxxx wrote: 
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Rosalie B. wrote:


Actually I found almost the opposite - my kids could get a good
math/science background much more easily than they could get a good
English or SS background.


	I would agree.  The education in many of the
social sciences is truly appalling, even in very good
schools.  There are certainly plenty of schools where
the math curriculum is also inadequate, but my experience
is that a strong social science curriculum is harder
to come by.  There are lots of students who graduate
with significant calculus under their belts, but very
few who would know ontology from epistemology.



Heck, there are very few who know a significant amount of American
history, or any world history to speak of, let alone philosophy!  In my
high school we started honors history class every year with the
Mayflower and got to roughly the Industrial Age before running out of
time.  Those who didn't read on their own were not going to learn much
of anything about WWII.

In the philosophy courses DH taught this semester at a Research 1
university, there were students who'd never *heard* of Hitler.
Seriously.


	Yeah, but at least most schools theoretically
*have* history classes ;-)  I worked with a professor from
another country who had been exposed to philosophy from
elementary school on.  His powers of critical thinking
were astonishing to behold.  He could think rings around
nearly everyone else in his field--even in a room full of
intellectual heavyweights.  Now, I'm not claiming that
teaching philosophy in elementary schools would turn
everyone into geniuses.  This guy came to the table
equipped with a lot of resources.  But with all the
noise about how it's important for kids to learn critical
thinking, it's amazing to me that there seems to have been
no attempt to introduce the very subject that provides
people with the tools for understanding and evaluating
thought.

Best wishes,
Ericka
.

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