Evolution in Kindergarten: Now Brought to You by the National Science Foundation

[Kalkidas]

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/05/evolution_in_ki_1102814.html

"I wrote here the other day about UK developmental psychologist Nathalia
Gjersoe who supports reeducating kids as young as five years old to
reject "promiscuous teleology" -- that is, the intuition that life
reflects purpose and design ("Evolution in Kindergarten"). She drew on
the research of Deborah Kelemen at Boston University who "published a
promising, child-friendly intervention: illustrated storybooks about
natural selection."

Now your taxpayer dollars will be going toward research on
preconditioning young minds to accept evolution.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) just awarded Boston University a
grant of just under $1.5 million for their project, "Evolving Minds in
Early Elementary School: Foundations for a Learning Sequence on Natural
Selection Using Stories."Yes, the principal investigator is Deborah
Kelemen. This research focuses on students in grades K-2......."

[Robert Camp]

On 5/2/16 4:51 PM, Kalkidas wrote:
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/05/evolution_in_ki_1102814.html
>
> "I wrote here the other day about UK developmental psychologist Nathalia
> Gjersoe who supports reeducating kids as young as five years old to
> reject "promiscuous teleology" -- that is, the intuition that life
> reflects purpose and design ("Evolution in Kindergarten"). She drew on
> the research of Deborah Kelemen at Boston University who "published a
> promising, child-friendly intervention: illustrated storybooks about
> natural selection."
>
> Now your taxpayer dollars will be going toward research on
> preconditioning young minds to accept evolution.

Damn straight! And don't get me started on preconditioning young minds
to accept that twinkling stars are actually huge suns, swimming pools
aren't just big, toy-filled bathtubs, and two plus two equals four.

[Burkhard]

And standard mathematics, even though most kids find counting
counterintuitive! The horror!
http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/buildingblocks/writings/preschool%20math%20in%20tcm.pdf

[Rolf]

"Burkhard" <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:ng9ham$7mq$1...@dont-email.me...

> Kalkidas wrote:
>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/05/evolution_in_ki_1102814.html
>>
>> "I wrote here the other day about UK developmental psychologist Nathalia
>> Gjersoe who supports reeducating kids as young as five years old to
>> reject "promiscuous teleology" -- that is, the intuition that life
>> reflects purpose and design ("Evolution in Kindergarten"). She drew on
>> the research of Deborah Kelemen at Boston University who "published a
>> promising, child-friendly intervention: illustrated storybooks about
>> natural selection."
>>
>> Now your taxpayer dollars will be going toward research on
>> preconditioning young minds to accept evolution.
>>

Since I have conditioned my newsreader to ignor Kalky, I reply here, saying
that preconditioning young minds to religion is a sin!

Kids have no means of knowing or understanding that they are being lied to,
and that is what teaching them religion actually is even if the perpetrator
is a firm believer and think children needs to be indoctrinated before they
have learned to use their own brains.

Rolf

[Walter Bushell]

In article <ng9int$11r$1...@news.albasani.net>,

"Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Since I have conditioned my newsreader to ignor Kalky, I reply here, saying
> that preconditioning young minds to religion is a sin!
>
> Kids have no means of knowing or understanding that they are being lied to,
> and that is what teaching them religion actually is even if the perpetrator
> is a firm believer and think children needs to be indoctrinated before they
> have learned to use their own brains.
>
> Rolf

Me 2

--
To terrify children with the image of hell,
to consider women an inferior creation is that good for the world?
Christopher Hitchens

[eridanus]

Conditioning children since early years had been a common occurrence since
some millenniums ago. Christians are not different in this point.
The only thing new is that someone is proposing to the opposite, to
deconstruct the ideas some children could had received at home, about we were
put here by a god to praise him 5 times a day, the "sunnah salat" or its
Christian equivalent.

I recall of my childhood, they were teaching me, we were put here to praise
god. I was a little damn philosophic kid, and started to think this was
totally absurd. How an infinite god would had created the stupid humans for this silly purpose? To sing the praises of god? This do not make any sense
for a children 12 years old, and that was me. I think the best way to make
incredulous children is to piss them off by teaching some stupid religion.

Eridanus

[eridanus]

of course, maths is counterintuitive. Most primitive hunter gatherers had
not any notion of numbers, other than 1, 2 and nothing. Some are more
sophisticated and complex numbers like 2-1 that means 3 or 2-2 meaning four, but this degree of sophistication is rather rarer.
eridanus

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 9 May 2016 02:33:45 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by eridanus
<leopoldo...@gmail.com>:

I always understood that most primitive cultures had 4
numbers - 1, 2, 3, and "many". (When I was a Marine,
referring to the enemy, that became 1, 2, 3, and "A whole
damn pot full, sir!")
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[jillery]

On Mon, 09 May 2016 09:48:40 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

I knew a 3-year-old just learning to count, when he got past four
fingers, yelled "whole gobs" (no, this does not imply Marines are
dumber than a 3-year-old, but some have made that case...)
--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[eridanus]

of course, I forgot the number "many" and some equivalents.
I think I mentioned the number "nothing".

[Earle Jones27]

*
What really slowed the advance of mathematics was not the lack of big
numbers. It was the lack of the concept of 'zero'. Romans, for
example, had no zero.

Zero is just another point on the number line, like 4, -26, pi, and
1,931 (the prime number that is the year of my birth.)

earle
*

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 10 May 2016 10:53:18 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Earle Jones27
<earle...@comcast.net>:

>> of course, I forgot the number "many" and some equivalents.
>> I think I mentioned the number "nothing".
>
>*
>What really slowed the advance of mathematics was not the lack of big
>numbers. It was the lack of the concept of 'zero'. Romans, for
>example, had no zero.
>
>Zero is just another point on the number line, like 4, -26, pi, and
>1,931 (the prime number that is the year of my birth.)

It's a bit more than that; AFAIK without a zero, positional
math notation becomes essentially impossible, and we're
stuck with the techniques used to manipulate Roman
numerals*, something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

* Quick, divide MCMLXIV by XIII...
No, I can't either, at least not "quickly".

And I'm a true child of the Atomic age, born in Dec 1945.

[eridanus]

zero as operative device is one thing. The Romans and later Europeans, and even later Arabs had to take into account some virtual zero, that was not
expressed in writing. But when doing some calculations you took into
account this "virtual number" that was not represented yet by a graphic
sign. When the sign zero was invented it was a great thing and the
probabilities of a novice committing errors was almost near zero.

Then, it exist a virtual concept of zero among people that ignore the
numerical signs; it is represented by the word "nothing". I hunted "nothing",
I found "nothing" to eat, etc. I had eaten "nothing" since yesterday.

Using the word "nothing", is the "most close to zero" people without a
knowledge of numbers can get.

I supposed it was evident.
eridanus

[eridanus]

El martes, 10 de mayo de 2016, 18:58:02 (UTC+1), Earle Jones27 escribió:

calculus was perfectly done "using a virtual zero" within your brain.
Of course, it required a more longer training. The teacher had to instill
the idea of a virtual zero, not even using this word that probably was
not yet invented, but it was evident that was possible.
we learn to add mentally some elemental operations, like children use even
today, 5+5=10 100+100=200 etc. Multiplication or division was a little more
difficult, you needed to learn mentally first some of the basic elemental operations. But of course, this method not using a sign for zero was more
prone to errors, until you had acquired enough training. With the Arabic numerals, that were Indian, if I am not wrong, the process of learning
elemental calculus was much easier and faster to manage.
Eridanus

[Robert Carnegie]

I think you may not be using the word "calculus"
in the English convention, unless you are.

Anyway - the zero symbol in a position in a number
is not quite the same as the actual number of zero -
but they certainly are related.

According to <http://www.mostlyodd.com/on-the-origin-of-zero/>
the Western European church was opposed to zero;
this apparently is associated with the "Fourth Crusade"
but seems to be not the cause of it.