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Academic Indoctrination
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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Valuing how to properly research things and having critical thinking skills is an ideology. And it’s a dangerous one to those whose ideology is faith-based epistemology.
And I would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling empiricists!
Sometimes it’s faith. Others, it’s misguided distrust.
We’re taught to take facts as truth in primary school, then taught to challenge those facts in higher education. As we mature, our desire to doubt naturally grows. Without education on how to properly research, those misguided feelings of doubt lead to anti-vax, flat Earth, and Egyptian alien conspiracy theories.
They’re right in thinking the government is corrupt. They just don’t understand why they shouldn’t trust Truth Social either.
In grade school, I can think of two specific examples where we were taught a lesson that was supposed to develop critical thinking skills. The infamous Tongue Map and the Mpemba Effect (hot water freezes faster than cold water)
Both of these are examples where an authority will confidently tell you a fact (which is bogus), then have you conduct an experiment which ought to disprove them.
I did the tongue map in kindergarten. It's obvious that it doesn't hold up, but when I told my teacher about it she said I must have been doing it wrong. Later in grade school I did the experiment to 'confirm' the Mpemba effect. Despite the evidence before me I still lied on report and said that the hot water froze faster because I thought that's what the teacher wanted. Apparently so did half the class, and because we did the experiment we all got a passing grade and were never told that it was supposed to be false.
So I dunno. I guess they ought to teach critical thinking at a young age, but the instructors have to buy into it to.
There’s a great book called Lies My Teacher Told Me that explains how the tongue map was disproven over a century ago, yet it remains in textbooks today.
The reason you were taught that way is because the incorrect information is still part of today’s curriculum. They weren’t teaching you to challenge the information. They were teaching you to conform by accepting false information.
You and your fancy grade school. Here, in America, we did pasta art:
all hail the prophet of his noodley appendages!
Corruption is a spectrum and many faceted. We don't have to bribe police or doctors here. In many ways we're much less corrupt than average. I think most of the FBI and most federal agencies are really pretty clean. The FDA and EPA and IRS might have issues, but corruption isn't really one of them.
In other ways, we have a Supreme Court to bring balance to that.
Do you sincerely believe the police is free from corruption? What about congressional influence through the lobbying power of large corporations?
Oh God no. Just that our police corruption is different. In some ways we do have less police corruption (primarily direct, individual bribes). But our police system is one of the most broken things in our country.
Corruption is a forever fight. It's important to recognize it's not binary, and to recognize the clean and good where you can.
We can't just throw up our hands and say it's all corrupt. That might even be more damaging than "both sides are the same". We have to fight for specific fixes. This shit requires nuance and takes constant effort.
I totally agree. They’re right in assuming there is corruption, but yes, it takes curiosity and thorough investigation to determine the areas and types of corruption. A billionaire criminal rapist pedophile running for dictator isn’t necessarily the best resource.
I think it would be better to say "I trust the stated principles and mandate from the people for government organizations, but I don't trust the people or groups in those organizations."
On paper, the FBI, EPA, IRS...etc make sense. But each one of them is run by people, who have agendas. They should have to provide independent, verifiable information for their actions, instead of using the name or mandate of the organization to justify their actions.
But that's not what I'm trying to say. In general, I do mostly trust the FBI, IRS, EPA, and FDA, including the people and processes to control corruption.
I absolutely don't trust local or state police.
Do you actually trust them, or do you just agree with some of the more public things they've done recently?
Hey Time Traveller, welcome to 2024!
Now I know back in the 19th, ideology was just a term to denote a set of ideas.
And that's cool and all. Viva la Renaissance!
But we kind of diverged from then and did some injustice to the etymology of the word. Now it's more like a synonym for dogma and it has negative connotations of irrationality and an unwillingness to examine arguments critically.
Hope you enjoy your time in the 21st century and wait until you hear about what we did with the word "Gay".
This is kinda true and of course oversimplified.
"Ideology" as a term was first popularized by, surprisingly, Napoleon, as a politically loaded set of ideas akin to a belief system.
Philosophers and economists worked the term over for refinement so that it built up quite a bit of nuance and academic controversy over the next century.
In common vernacular it trended towards simpler uses like a synonym for 'worldview' or 'dogma', but in scholars it's been fractured into contentious specifics.
Terry Eagleton's book Ideology is a good read as he's both a great explainer of historical thought and fairly practical, and he settled on 'a system of ideas and beliefs that allows the oppressed to participate in their own oppression,' which is fairly summarized and useful.
Yeah, but I hope you realize my comment was more intended to be a humorous take, building on the humour of the comment I replied on.
On reddit, I eventually got used to adding a /s to every mild joke.
Up until now, I was pleasantly surprised that it isn't needed on Lemmy.
Yes lol except your comment was correct not sarcastic! Just wry on ham. I was addressing the correct part because not enough people know that stuff.
Can you please elaborate on what you mean by how that's dangerous? Do you mean that how we're taught to apply critical thinking and proper research while being overconfident in those tools leads to poor beliefs because the methods may be flawed or based on a false premise? Or do you mean something else? I don't think I understand completely.
(Please note I'm a bit sleepy but also intrigued.)
Zachariah's saying that empiricism, cricical thinking, and scientific reasoning are seen as dangerous by people whose worldviews are based on faith rather than reality because questioning traditional and baseless narratives about the world causes cognitive dissonance. I think that the people who find it most dangerous are those in positions of power on the basis of those narratives who don't want their followers or supporters to stop believing.
He means it's hard to teach things like religion* and woke-ism and climate change denial if you know how to properly research.
*(Religion and science isn't incompatible, if the religion is more principles based than made up facts based. Catholicism generally does okay.)