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I feel like media literacy is more useful for preventing this crap than a scientific education would be, though both help to some degree.
I would argue the latter is a good way to learn the former
Yep, maths and science are only partially about learning maths and science. The even more important purpose is learning critical reasoning skills, which is a requirement for media literacy.
Specifically epistemology and concrete notions of degrees of truth and how truth is approximated by science.
the problem is that critical thinking should be a reflex and not a mental effort
Ah so close. This comic should end with
“I did my own research”
But… I do my own research…
I will argue this is not the problem. It’s that vaccines were too good in their effectiveness. A victim of their own success.
The problem is not and has not been science. The problem is messaging.
This is the same reason why anti-vax is so popular, you think that’s about science? It’s idiots like RFK Jr and Trump have the ear of people. It’s all messaging folks.
A person is smart. People are dumb.
I have to agree about the too good in their effectiveness. To get to a point where people are just like, “Nah, it ain’t a big deal” is built atop the millions of dead.
It’s a big problem, more if in the education system is based only on the in the accumulation of data and on the other hand without putting priorities in reasoning, worse when science is strongly influenced by absurd religious beliefs. They want usefull and submissive subjects, not thinking people.
Mystery of history Vol 1
the bigger problem is that some teachers are so mentally checked out that they make those subjects actively unappealing. I wonder what makes them that way…
This is an important comment. We do not teach science on high schools , we stream students to science if they are self directed, then everyone else takes bullshit courses for an easy grade, these days acheived with LLMs.
yeah, and this approach is so bullshit it is ridiculous - it depends on a child being self-conscious and motivated enough to get into stuff that A LOT of time and effort to understand even with significant adult assistance and proper focus. Of course there will be a significant segment that won’t handle it well
Students. Students make them that way. It’s no coincidence that most older teachers feel like they’ve checked out.
I did substitute teaching for about two years. I got to see a lot of my old teachers, Some classes were wonderful, a true joy to teach. Others, not so much. I can understand why some people, as you say, mentally check out. It’s a coping mechanism. They were not all the same people I remember. Maybe part of growing older. Maybe part of years of difficult students sucking out all the joy of teaching they had in them
my mom is a teacher and she has similar observation. It also has a lot to do with how parents treat their children. i don’t know if that’s a problem in US, in Ukraine my generation (born late 80s early 90s) is very insecure about their social performance and stats and it’s a complete bullshit. The current middle and school kids are affected by that. There is a lot of stuff in children’s heads that just needs time to settle and forcing to push through at someone’s else pace is counterproductive. it is a regular pattern when a student starts with solid grades but the chase for the highest grade over the years completely wrecks them and their overall grades start to slip hard because their parents conditioned them to perform and they try to brute force their way to high grades like it’s a competition when it is anything but. The burnout they go through is brutal. And by the time they finish school - it’s just a performer of sorts - a person who is able to do enough for a grade or rewards but there’s just no substance no passion behind it. Meanwhile, students who starts off mediocre or low grades at middle school level up significantly by the time they get to high school simply because they commit to figure it out and once they tap into what clicks for them (math, sciences, languages, arts) they just start pieces together their personality jigsaws and it is way less dramatic then with high performers who would do anything for a grade.
I’ve seen a lot of the counter balance to this which is STEM folk not having respect for the humanities, rendering them empathetically underdeveloped.
I’m not even sure what you are trying to say here, science and empathy are 2 very different things. This is a very oversimplified version, but science should only be about answering if assumptions we have are true or false, based on enough evidence.
Yeah the whole “STEM” thing is dumb and anti-science. This corny meme implies that philosophy majors become flat-earthers, etc. It’s a great example of the reactionary STEM mindset.
STEM is just another educational grift.
- https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/promoting-stem-education-foolishly
- https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2025/07/15/the_stem_education_bubble_has_burst_1122821.html
- https://www.educationworld.com/a_news/opinion-obsession-stem-education-dangerous-1575002673
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2018.1467599
None of the basic bio taught in American or Western schools is enough to actually understand mrna and how modern immunization works. Physics has ONLY been helpful to me racing cars.
The issue is tearing down institutions that serve as experts.
You have clearly not been to a high school in the Netherlands.
Please point out this material that’ll give you what you need to understand mrna. Because none of the Dutch I’ve worked with were particularly more educated than most other college grads.
It’s been a long time since I went to high school, I don’t recall which books we had exactly, but a quick google shows that now there are several tutoring websites aimed at high school kids that cover the subject.
- https://www.studeersnel.nl/nl/document/middelbare-school-nederland/biologie/bio-samenvatting-pp-rna/8114781
- https://biologielessen.nl/mrna/
- https://www.lessonup.com/nl/lesson/hhx9ojz3re2xA2Gx7/kBZQfigB6GjviSbbb
This is pretty similar to what I learned in high school.
So maybe this is definitions of “understand” but that looks exactly what I learned in HS but for cell bio/dna, and I wouldn’t say I have the education to be making medical decisions.
I may be splitting hairs at this point 🤷♂️.
Right, the education to make medical decisions generally takes ten years after high school. You can really expect schools that dont specialize in a specific field to teach knowledge like that. High schools are for general education, and thats fine.
The problem is that people who only have some hazy memories of their general education feel entitled to have an opinion about things they don’t understand and then think their opinion is just as valid as those of people who did take those 10 years to gain actual understanding.
People need to learn how to build a “firewall” for their brain.
If smart people are so smart, why aint they in charge? Checkmate nerds!
Because with educatio comes a sense of ethics and responsibility. Anyone with ethics will never get accepted into any political party.
“Smart people” are generally not rich people. They are coerced into labor like anyone else. Sometimes their labor is even useful.
They generally don’t have the time or reason to participate in a counter-productive popularity contest.
Because to be successful in politics it’s much more important to be charismatic and well spoken than to be actually smart. It’s a
dsad state of affairs.Agreed, we need to get the dad brainrot out of office. When, if ever, was the last time we didn’t have a dad for president?
No idea, I’m not in the US. We don’t have a president here
Well the new world order is what the people in power want, but they only need smartphones and tv to do it. No chips in the brain needed, people are idiots.
I was one of those people in college, the only reason I even graduated was because I found tutors to get me through my required math and science credits. I’m smart enough to know that there are many things I don’t understand so I listen to who do understand them to not do that is like going to a lawyer and explaining the practice of law or to a mechanic and telling them how to fix your car.
You’ll never be a writer but you still learned how to write (if somewhat poorly).
I feel like theres a difference between basic english and
Yeah basic english is extremely complicated with a vast vocabulary and syntax, while the quadratic formula is a very basic computation that can be summed up in a simple formula.
Makes me think of this upcoming competition to find fossils that are not surrounded by the rocks that science expects.
I suspect a lot of people who believe (some subset of) the crazy nonsense are actually science inclined. But we (often/used to) teach science as about great people heroically defying the consensus and triggering a paradigm shift that changes the world. And that looks a lot more like vaccine denialism than pipetting samples for 50 hours. Some of the community spaces are clearly interested in thinking about the world, and there’s a self-isolating effect of asking someone
“Why is there a tree that’s fossilized across 5 different epochs of bedrock?”
and being told you’re a crank. Then layer on the grifters.
So yes; do remember to talk people through the facts before labeling them a conspiracy theorists, and focus on the shared amazement at how weird/complicated/nuanced the data is. Ask lots of questions!
Should add a sentence to top panel that says “they should teach useful things in school like how to do your taxes!”
spoiler alert: that’s just reading and basic math applied to something besides a test for a grade.
