> I'm not sure it's particularly accurate to describe such questions as "nihilist", they're completely necessary.
Yeah. 'Nihilist' wasn't the correct word. Perhaps fallacious was more accurate: I think the subtext of my Q was, "If you can't fix everything why even start?" Which is dangerous.
I think I was fishing for answers: how is critical thinking even taught? My only experience with school was my one pass through it. And I didn't start critically thinking until my late 20's during the Clinton administration. I remember taking a critical thinking class in college (engineering school) and just sitting there as a freshman with my mouth hanging open when called on to make a critique.
It took a degree of engagement for me to become critical about issues. But then I was one-sided, and it took literally 20 more years before I started realizing there are two sides to an argument.
Not to toot my own horn, but I was very smart and very unobjective about anything outside of tech for 4/5ths of my life.
> But by no means am I intending to make any sort of value judgement about how successful this school or that school will be by merely suggesting taking a stab at introducing media literacy into public schooling.
I don't know how many other HN'ers have the same question, but I'd really like to know: how would a teacher proceed to instill what took me 40+ years to learn (and still learning!) into a teen-aged brain?
Yeah. 'Nihilist' wasn't the correct word. Perhaps fallacious was more accurate: I think the subtext of my Q was, "If you can't fix everything why even start?" Which is dangerous.
I think I was fishing for answers: how is critical thinking even taught? My only experience with school was my one pass through it. And I didn't start critically thinking until my late 20's during the Clinton administration. I remember taking a critical thinking class in college (engineering school) and just sitting there as a freshman with my mouth hanging open when called on to make a critique.
It took a degree of engagement for me to become critical about issues. But then I was one-sided, and it took literally 20 more years before I started realizing there are two sides to an argument.
Not to toot my own horn, but I was very smart and very unobjective about anything outside of tech for 4/5ths of my life.
> But by no means am I intending to make any sort of value judgement about how successful this school or that school will be by merely suggesting taking a stab at introducing media literacy into public schooling.
I don't know how many other HN'ers have the same question, but I'd really like to know: how would a teacher proceed to instill what took me 40+ years to learn (and still learning!) into a teen-aged brain?
Any teachers out there?