> Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation.
I'm gonna guess you don't have children. Children like easy-to-follow directions. They don't understand nuance at all. It's not because it's "easier on parents and teachers", it's because it's what works.
Young children absolutely need easy-to-follow directions because they can't follow complicated directions.
I'm not arguing against easy-to-follow directions, so I don't quite see your point. I'm against parents and schools encouraging unquestioning obedience to their directions.
If you take children to be under 18 then the statement seems valid because I don't think there's a lot of nuance going on in most middle or high schools.
I think 'the meta' about parenting is more about entrusting your children to behave appropriately when unsupervised rather than insuring arbitrary directions are followed by making them in the form of an easy "lie-to-children".
When I'm 4, I could win the debate with adults. That bothered me for several years to think why an adult looks like child. As an adult now, I know the reason their mind never grow up. Not children could not understand complicated thing, it is that adult could not explain them well.
THIS. My father believed children should never be given a short answer, or told "because I said so". If we wanted something we would have to give a rational argument why. If we asked a question and he wasn't sure of the answer, he would say he didn't know and we would go to the encyclopedia together to read the full answer.
Every night from the time I was 6 we had to read 50 pages in a book he assigned and discuss it. This was after he came home from 10 hour days at work.
Most parents are (1) too lazy to properly explain things to their children, (2) unwilling to say when they don't know the answer, (3) lack the critical thinking skills themselves to evaluate statements, (4) lack the basic research skills needed to validate or invalidate a proposition.
That is the problem in America.
When I was about 8 years old we were riding in the car with a couple my parents were friends with and their children who were similar in age to us. The son asked the father why the sky was blue. The father turned around and said, "well, it reflects the ocean". I said, "no, you're wrong, it's the color the atmosphere refracts light" (or something like that). The father and son both stared at me in shock because I would tell an adult they were wrong. My father just laughed.
I don't think I was necessarily smarter than other children by nature. I was just brought up with the idea that it is everyone's personal responsibility to read, to learn, to say when you don't know the answer, to find reliable sources. And above all, never to memorize answers without fully understanding them.
I'm gonna guess you don't have children. Children like easy-to-follow directions. They don't understand nuance at all. It's not because it's "easier on parents and teachers", it's because it's what works.
You add nuance later in middle and high school.