Learning Science Facts Doesn't Boost Science Reasoning

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TheKingsRaven
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

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Joined: 16 Feb 2009
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 306
Location: UK

18 Feb 2009, 6:06 am

oh my, that sounds fascinating, a quick google search found this, I won't have time to read until tonight but it looks good. I also remember ESR mentioning in how to be a hacker that it never occured to Linus to write his code in anything except English but that might simply be a self reinforing circle:
Technical people speek in English because it has the best technical vocabulary.
English develops the best technical vocabulary because technial people use it.

As for my school, they did teach by facts and repetition, that always annoyed me because I'm great at understanding concepts but not so not quite as memorising facts, possibly because facts arn't as interesting as concepts. It has disadvantages though: for example I often didn't learn useful equations and reconstructing them from concepts in exam conditions is hard.
There were some exceptions though, we had a weekly "Active Citizenship" class during GCSEs that included stuff like how to look for Bias in the news and ethics, and there was actually a critical thinking AS level held after school hours for a few of us. I can't remember much of either of them but hopefully the skills remain longer than the memory of what actually was said inside the classroom.