a Pete B. snip followed by > my comment. 

I was taught in grade school that education is less about accumulating info than it is about learning how to think. And essential to that is understanding why you think what you do, where ideas come from. 

Are you just passing stuff along, or are you generating new and original ideas? If you are passing stuff along, do you scrutinize its merit or just who wrote it? The opposite of the ad hominem attack is the blind acceptance of stuff based on some reverence for the author. 

>I went to some pretty sorry primary schools and I can't really say I learned much there.  A bit later it did make me well aware that the quality of education here or there (my family traveled around quite a bit) was not all the same everywhere.  I would agree without reservations with Pete first sentence. As I have suggested before... wife and I have come to the conclusion that science is a process and to some extent science education or training is about teaching you to properly think and walk thru this process.

>second sentence Pete is right on time and again without reservation I agree.  How many many folks make mistakes in thinking that they 'know' this or that when in fact they are just 'relying on authority'?  And with science everything we know now may be flipped on it's head in a decade < someone here (on this line) referred to science as 'self correcting' which I think is a very good description.

Gene in central Texas...

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