[aposiopetic]

I got it from a semester long past with Gould and Lewontin, the latter of whom, I suspect, got it from Dobzhansky himself. My point is that it is a teacher's job to cut through the nonsense and figure out how to engage students not just for a moment but rather to give them something solid to take with them and build upon (something that the famously gruff Lewontin did every bit as well as his departed superstar colleague).

To recapitulate: It is easy to criticize video-game-era kids for being slow on the uptake. That is why they need to be made to memorize structures and solve equations. My comment was thus about instructional goals and methods: it is easy to provide vivid and even memorable images but considerably harder to inculcate solid knowledge that can't be dislodged by the post hoc rationalizations of the doctrinaire.

[Soliton]

Learning is a talent that many simply do not have. You are obviously correct in that a strong foundation of knowledge is innoculation against foolishness later in life.

If you collect enough facts in life, you build reference points that can be used to qualify new facts when you encounter them. Unfortunately, most people collect opinions and falsehoods along the way and consider them true because they rely on faith in authority as their epistimological methodology. It is true because a person or institution says it is true. They build their beliefs upon the sands of faith rather than the rock of science.