Link to the Stuart Firestein conversation.
I found the discussion on how science is taught in schools very interesting. Specifically, that science classes before grad school is essentially learning what science already knows and memorizing it. Mr. Firestein expressed his worry that people that don’t go into science have this as their last formal interaction with science. I would love here if he has any ideas of how to change this fact. I think this is an interesting question because I can see both sides. The idea that there is so much more to science than just textbook knowledge is very interesting and I think more thoughtful classes early in education would be fascinating. However, it does seem important to know where science has been in order to successfully have a class like he is talking about. So would the answer be to encourage people to take more classes after these introductory classes? Or, maybe to inject some less textbook/historical classes between them?
I think this is a super interesting question, and definitely one that is relevant to our lives as students in this class. I think that another consideration for education is how the material is taught. Some of my best classes have been experiment based, where we would replicate the studies that other scientists went through. So even though we were "learning" what was already known, we were able to experience the scientific method ourselves.