.
.
.
> Secondly, the fact that these students heard this from their teacher and never bothered to think about it for themselves is equally frightening. It's one thing to accept historical data as being factual, but this description is clearly a biased opinion which could easily be argued. Any student who accepts opinion as being fact is missing out on a very important lesson: how to think and rationalize for themselves. Developing one's abilities to do so is just as important as digesting all of the other information thrust upon you in a classroom. Once a student graduates and joins the working society, a large amount of the information that they've accumulated through the years will slowly be forgotten (unless it's something that they use on a daily basis). However, one's need to think for themselves and form their own opinions will always be there and continue to grow (well... maybe not everyone).
>
.
.
.

This one lesson, perhaps the most important lesson in all of schooldom, was almost never taught to me in school. This was a lesson I never learned until one of my uncles pulled me aside to talk to me about it. He told me to not even believe everything even _he_ told me (which made me wonder if I should not trust him when he told me to not trust him, thereby trusting him).

Anyway, the first time I ever encountered an actual teacher who also told me to think for myself was in my final year in high school, in a "gifted students" class. I can't help but wonder, had that lesson been taught much earlier in the educational process, would there have been more kids in that class...