[13years]

Because banning gives a government the power to hide the truth. Who gets to decide something is a lie? The majority may all be in favor this time, but what gets banned next?

There is no issue with schools deciding it is not in their interest to teach a subject; however, not being allowed to discus a subject is same as book burning.

How about letting schools teach the subject along with skills on how to do proper investigation and scientific research and logical reasoning. In other words, how about teaching the kids how to logically reason through fact or fiction so they are prepared to analyze other subjects appropriately.

[olavk]

By that line of reasoning schools should no teach anything at all. 2+2=5 is just as valid math as 2+2=4, anything else would be allowing the government to hide the truth!

[13years]

That is not what I stated. Banning is saying that we can't discuss why 2+2 is not 5, because that subject is banned.

If a lot of people come often come to a wrong conclusion, you should be able to teach and discuss why that happens. Banning subjects is running away from debate and discussion. It fails to teach logical analysis and investigation.

[mikeash]

If any of my math classes had wasted a bunch of time on, "While we know that 2+2=4, there are a bunch of people who believe that 2+2=5, here's why they're wrong," I would have been rather annoyed.

The space of things that are wrong is too vast to explore thoroughly. Stick to what's right.

[13years]

I didn't expect anyone to take the example as a literal. The example was only a concept in response to the original poster who used it as a concept prop for their argument.

"Stick to what's right" lol, that's the point. Who decides what is right? The government? The teachers? Education should be more about how to learn and how to discover truth, not about force feeding what some bureaucrat thinks is right or wrong or important. The greatest period of geniuses per capita in history were during time of when the socratic method was used for teaching.

[pvaldes]

> Who decides what is right?

The scientific method. This is what we call it 'science' and not just 'opinion' or 'novel'.

[13years]

Sure, and the method by which government makes decisions certainly is not the scientific method and should not weigh in on such matters.

But still, even if you constrain yourself to such a definition of what is right, in reality you still may be wrong.

For example: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/odds-are-its-wrong and https://plus.google.com/+ChrisReeveOnlineScientificDiscourse... and http://www.vox.com/2015/5/13/8591837/how-science-is-broken

[olavk]

Off topic I know, but what time is you talking about with "genius per capita"? I wonder how this have been measured.

[13years]

So here are a couple of references. This one makes the assertion, but doesn't describe how it was derived. http://www.winwenger.com/socmeth3.htm

However, this one does describe how probably such an estimate has been derived and used. http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2007/09/mysteri...

And as an additional FYI. Some more modern related research. http://www.wired.com/2013/10/free-thinkers/

[olavk]

Who is talking about banning subjects? It is just a question of keeping science in science classes, and the study of religious ideas in classes about the study of religions ideas. For example the change from the geocentric to a heliocentric model and the Galileo controversy are important parts of the history of ideas and should be studied as such. But obviously the Ptolemaic model should not be thought in astronomy classes as if it was valid science.

[Oletros]

> however, not being allowed to discus a subject is same as book burning

They are allowed to discuss a subject, but not on the science class because it is not science. Or do you think that it has to be allowed to teach that the Earth is flat in science class?