There is a rational idea in your analogy—the idea of knowledge crystallizing simultaneously around several centers of growth can be illustrated with a quite viable example of a child living in a totalitarian state and having a loving father. As the child accumulates knowledge, they understand how their father is an example of an intelligent and purposeful person for them, while the totalitarian state persecutes dissidents by sending them to concentration camps, and this knowledge crystallizes around two different centers, until the child learns that their father is the commandant of one of such camps. What kind of remelting can align the child’s knowledge in this situation? It might seem that the problem is about growing up, but for example, religious dogmas and geocentrism also once collided with astronomical observations and the laws of planetary motion. I remember they even burned someone at the stake there. But when we studied this in Soviet school, everything was calibrated down to the smallest detail—the church was an example of obscurantism, while astronomy shed true light on the state of things in the universe. Therefore, this is not a problem of teaching at all, but a problem of curriculum design.
I translated this into English using an LLM, so it might appear to be LLM-generated, therefore I’m warning you in advance.
There is a rational idea in your analogy—the idea of knowledge crystallizing simultaneously around several centers of growth can be illustrated with a quite viable example of a child living in a totalitarian state and having a loving father. As the child accumulates knowledge, they understand how their father is an example of an intelligent and purposeful person for them, while the totalitarian state persecutes dissidents by sending them to concentration camps, and this knowledge crystallizes around two different centers, until the child learns that their father is the commandant of one of such camps. What kind of remelting can align the child’s knowledge in this situation? It might seem that the problem is about growing up, but for example, religious dogmas and geocentrism also once collided with astronomical observations and the laws of planetary motion.
I remember they even burned someone at the stake there. But when we studied this in Soviet school, everything was calibrated down to the smallest detail—the church was an example of obscurantism, while astronomy shed true light on the state of things in the universe. Therefore, this is not a problem of teaching at all, but a problem of curriculum design.
I translated this into English using an LLM, so it might appear to be LLM-generated, therefore I’m warning you in advance.