Teach them to think

Thinking about my final comments on the previous post, maybe enlightning was the wrong term to use... maybe evangalizing would be better. I believe in many cases it is a schools job to present many different viewpoints, to explain what is going on politically, socially, culturally, etc. (depending on the class). I think survey type courses, where you get a little info on many subjects is a good thing. I just don't like it when a particular point of view is pushed to hard as the "correct" view, etc. This applies in many classes.

Explaining why someone might think a particular programming language is ok, as long as it isn't pushed as *the* only programming language to use. And this holds especially true in many of the soft sciences, etc.

Some of my best soft science classes were a philosophy of ethics class where the instructure did not push his ethicial viewpoint, but we read many philosophers and our tests consisted of eassays where we would answer ethicial questions, saying which philosopher's viewpoint we held to in addressing the question, and why. There were no "right" and "wrong" answers, the grades were based upon how much you understood the material and how able you were to express yourself in those terms. Very fun class because it made you think. Another similar class was a political science class on current events, where again, the instructor had a particular view point and expressed it, but it was not the "correct" answer. It was just a viewpoint. We spent quite a bit of time in class discusses viewpoints, etc.

I think schools would do better to cause students to think, then to try and foster certain social, political, cultural viewpoints upon them...