This is why science, as a mode of inquiry, is fundamentally antithetical to all monolithic intellectual systems. In a beautiful essay, Feynman (1999) talks about the hard-won "freedom to doubt." It was born of a long and brutal struggle, and is essential to a functioning democracy. Intellectuals have a solemn duty to doubt, and to teach doubt. Educ... See more

Advocates of progressive education had long rejected rote learning, seeing it as not only authoritarian but also ineffective. Now they feared the new focus on math and science might exacerbate the problem. At the same time, even some tech-focused reformers were now wary of the problem of static thinking, and so it was that the progressive animosity

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