the 4th grade science test that has gone viral: sad but its true

[adieu]

61. Home schooling should definitely be disallowed.

As for charter and private schools, they should be accredited, like every other school.

But the real important issue is why such information should be taught in school in the first place? Whether one knows that dinosaurs were around from 165 million BC to 65 million BC or not is not really pertinent to day-to-day living. One can go through one's life full of richness and happiness without ever even knowing that dinosaurs existed, never mind when they existed.

It would be better if schools taught a method of analyzing information, so that whether you're getting information about dinosaurs or witches or black holes or whatever, you have a system to analyze the "truthiness" of the statements.

Giving tidbits like "dinosaurs roamed the earth 4000 years ago" is like giving a person a fish (in this case, a very small, inedible fish). Giving people a method to analyze information given to them is like teaching them how to fish.