You asked this 3 days ago, so probably you'll never see my reply. But:
I read, and understood most of, Cosmos while I was in elementary school. For me, the educational process of school certainly was toxic. I can see that it works for plenty of other people, but for many -- some like me -- it is extremely adversarial.
It took me years after graduation to relearn learning, and re-discover focused curiosity, and to recall again how to intelligently consider the accepted notions that many other people have.
To be more specific, public schools lack (among other things) any focus at all on critical thinking and problem-solving. There are simply not classes for those at most schools. At best, a few teachers try to work them in to their class here and there, but it's not taught the way that, say, mathematics is.
Science classrooms are another specific example: they tend to concentrate on printed material and multimedia, and the few "experiments" that students do are little more than facades for re-confirming whatever thing is being taught that week. There is very little there to teach investigation, or to drive intellectual curiosity.
I say this as someone that was fortunate enough to attend some of the best schools in the Bay Area at the time; I imagine that my experiences, mediocre and toxic as they were, were still quite a bit better than what the vast majority of students are exposed to.
This is not to say that I didn't have some brilliant and dedicated teachers, however. I remember several of them quite fondly, all the time.
I read, and understood most of, Cosmos while I was in elementary school. For me, the educational process of school certainly was toxic. I can see that it works for plenty of other people, but for many -- some like me -- it is extremely adversarial.
It took me years after graduation to relearn learning, and re-discover focused curiosity, and to recall again how to intelligently consider the accepted notions that many other people have.
To be more specific, public schools lack (among other things) any focus at all on critical thinking and problem-solving. There are simply not classes for those at most schools. At best, a few teachers try to work them in to their class here and there, but it's not taught the way that, say, mathematics is.
Science classrooms are another specific example: they tend to concentrate on printed material and multimedia, and the few "experiments" that students do are little more than facades for re-confirming whatever thing is being taught that week. There is very little there to teach investigation, or to drive intellectual curiosity.
I say this as someone that was fortunate enough to attend some of the best schools in the Bay Area at the time; I imagine that my experiences, mediocre and toxic as they were, were still quite a bit better than what the vast majority of students are exposed to.
This is not to say that I didn't have some brilliant and dedicated teachers, however. I remember several of them quite fondly, all the time.