QotD: "I think the blind passion of political discussions makes it very clear how desperately uninformed and uneducated most of us are today

"But also, one of my phrases to capture the problem in education today is that children are being taught to look around them and think, 'This is all here, and now our job is just to form opinions about it,' rather than, 'This is all here -- and here is how we got here, and here is where it comes from, and here is what it depends on.' Even just understanding that this world that they know hasn't existed forever is important...    "I think the [blind passion of political discussions] makes it very clear how desperately uninformed and uneducated most of us are today, because we should be bringing to bear on our opinions of politics a vast knowledge of everything that has been tried in the past and whether it succeeded or failed. And most children today are coming into such discussions blind, but also having been told that it's very important to have strong opinions. So they've maybe memorised some floating, disconnected facts and they've been taught to have impassioned convictions about things -- which means their impassioned convictions are based on nothing, ultimately on substance. So, we are trying to give them meaningful, systematic, real knowledge on which to ground judgements in every realm of their life."~ Lisa Van Damme, founder/director of VanDamme Academy
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