none of that is true. Learning science in school is not about teaching you how to analyse methodological errors in whitepapers. That's way too high level for high school students. In my experience it was mostly about learning the basic scientific method, and learning about some practical scientific models like Newtonian mechanics, basic biology & chemistry, that sort of thing.

This claim that the world would have less conspiracy theorists if only there was more science on the curriculum at school has a huge [citation needed]. So much of that stuff is downwind from cultural conflict and distrust of the government, not a lack of education.

“none of that is true” - compelling. lol.

I was going to include a few links to recent reputable studies which confirm exactly my talking points, but why - they are very easily found, trivial outcomes that have been proven time and again and I’m not here to do throw chicken bones to people that form counterpoints on emotion.

You can be mad if you want, but my reasoning is based on my understanding of what's actually taught in physics or chemistry classes - not the empirical and epistemological process of "science" that got us the findings in these fields, but the findings themselves - scientific models of chemical reactions, Newtonian mechanics, etc. I would love it if we could increase the critical thinking skills of the general populace, but I don't see how that's the way to do it. And having these basic skills in specific scientific disciplines could spark interest in a career in research, which is great, but they don't make you more rational unless you're teaching empiricism or logic or whatever as well - at which point, why not just teach empiricism, logic and critical thinking?

All of it is true, but not as a direct consequence: improving your ability to think and reason, generally speaking, and not with respect to any specific concept that was taught to you, is a higher-order effect of STEM education.

that's not true at all. Case in point: engineers are over-represented in extremist groups and beliefs.

I don't think that studying science leads to increased critical thinking until the point where you're having to actually discover things for yourself - because before that point you're just re-learning what other people are telling you is true.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineers_and_woo

Engineers are human too, are susceptible to being wrong, and are susceptible to all other sorts of human cognitive biases.

With respect to the association between engineers and extremist groups and beliefs, I would wager that this is probably better explained by a third factor (personality traits which make someone less flexible, and less comfortable with shades of grey, for example).

Your comment is interesting, but none of the questions it raises mean that what I said wasn't true.

The question is not "are engineers inherently better thinkers". The question is "If you take someone and teach them STEM topics, do they become better thinkers than they were previously". The answer is (ironically / speaking of black and white thinking) pretty unequivocally "yes".

if high school science classes were about epistemology, then I might agree with your comment above - but they aren't, they're about learning some bits about biology, chemistry and physics. You don't really learn anything about epistemology, rationality, or even really empiricism from learning the periodic table or what a frog's organs look like.

I will agree with you that the manner in which we teach science has a lot of room for improvement, but in the aggregate, despite all the failings of the education system, I maintain that what I said is true.

The effectiveness of STEM education is certainly held back by the difficulties in keeping students engaged and interested, and in the failings of the educators themselves. I would suggest that raising the bar for educators (assuming supply wasn't an issue, which I recognize it is) would go a long way towards teaching STEM better, and augmenting its impact on students' lives.

Edit: I did learn about epistemology in school, but coverage was rather superficial and incomplete. I suspect people's experiences vary wildly.

I just don't see it when it comes to science education. If we were talking about teaching students critical thinking and reasoning skills then I'd be 100% on board with that because that's a directly-useful skill (and one I should've probably included on the list of pragmatic skills). But learning those skills by proxy of science would be extremely roundabout, and definitely isn't what's happening right now.

>Studying science teaches the ability to find facts and use evidence in decision making

>this helps people from becoming “suckers”

Science is a helpful baseline and should also be taught for other reasons (everyone should have a basic understanding of how the world works). But it doesn't necessarily develop critical thinking skills, which is the real missing element these days. Many people would do better to understand basic logic, induction, deduction, fallacies, etc.

And, a lot of people are emotionally manipulated into becoming "suckers", wherein their knowledge and even intelligence are short-circuited.

Not 100% sure what to do about that problem.