"The Joy of Living Dangerously"

Today we discussed Richard Dawkins essay entitled "The Joy of Living Dangerously." Our discussion centered mostly around the concept of teaching facts. Is this a good idea? Does teaching facts enable kids with a good education? What is the purpose of teaching facts? Should we only teach facts? These are just some of the questions raised and answered in the discussion.

Dawkins promotes looking at the question rather than the fact. To say to look at the questions means, why did something happen? Why does B follow A? Ask how the facts became facts. Discover the context of those facts and how they relate to other facts. You need a "binding thread" to hold them together, writes Dawkins.

But what is fact? Why do we need it? In class someone brought up that in schools they get in this mindset of you have to learn at the level and produce the work that you are supposed to be capable of. If you exceed this, you get punished. An example that was given was the format of writing essays, particularly the 5 paragraph essay. If a student we to broaden his horizons by including more paragraphs and bigger words with more elaborate sentences, he would get a bad grade just because he was not doing exactly what they wanted. There was this fact, this standard that had to be followed. So this is an example where it wasn't used well. But you need a balance, because you need facts. They are the foundation of learning. You cannot teach a child about imaginary numbers if they don't even know what a number is. You have to start somewhere.

Also, he mentions how Sanderson hated the lab doors being locked so students could not pursue their interests. But the doors had to be locked anyway. So the students in pursuit of getting in the lab learned all the could about locks so that they could sneak in the lab and work on their projects. The students were careful to put every they had used back where it was. I can relate to this when I would stay up late to read by the night light some book that interested me at the time. I think I became more interested in the book because I didn't have many opportunities to read verses as having all the time in the world. There's something exciting and adventurous sneaking around in order to learn. I think that if in the story the doors were unlocked all the time, that freedom could easily get abused because people would take for granted the special privileges. Somehow when something restricted and you have to go to extra measures to get it, you strive all the more for it. You know that it is worthwhile because it is locked up and restricted. Our rebellious nature isn't that bad I guess.