Why should the solar system be taught in secondary schools?
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Answer:
It is part of your education as a citizen to know something about the "island" we inhabit and the "ocean" that surrounds it. So you can make informed and rational decisions as an adult.
Are you suggesting we should not learn geography either?
It is part of a deep-felt need of the human psyche to explain and understand how we came to be where we are, and what it means that we are here. Why would you wish to withhold such information?
Apart from anything else, space exploration will fill the newspapers and TV programmes and young people will want to be able to make sense of these headlines.
And are old Star Trek programmes and Star Wars films just going to disappear? Young people will be bound to come across them. The speculation about what lies out there, via the human imagination, is another deep-felt human need too.
Surely we should be equipping young people to be able to distinguish science fact from science fiction?
And in any case, how are we going to develop the next generation of scientists and engineers to develop space exploration, unless the subject is part of general education and can inspire young people to choose a career in it? There are plenty of other frontiers of science, (robotics, AI, genetics, eg) competing for their intellectual interest and commitment.
Sure, they have to know more about those. Why ask those? Maybe you have not studied that?
wow that Spongy guy is retarded. It should be taught because 9th graders cant make an educated decision about what they want to do with their life, And You are stupid.
Otherwise they may pester their parents on "Why the Sun rises in the east?" or "Why cant I thouch the moon?"
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