Innovation does not happen as a result of the scientific education. It happens in spite of it.

Until a certain age, most children learn well by rote memorization. It's a good time to fill them up with facts and tables.

I did. 6th grade science. That was 35 years ago.

Probably. Government education treats children as one-size-fits-all. It does not really encourage inquiry except within certain parameters and well-established guidelines.

 

As when the wright brothers was designing their plane the fundamental forces acting on such a plane and the manner they act was unknown and in fact what was assume to be known at at the time happen to had been wrong.

They needed to build the first wind tunnel and by doing so found those fundamental figures.

After the forces are understood then it is engineering however when the forces are not understood and need to be found it is scientific research.

The wright brothers did both scientific research and engineering.

 

I invented an invisible plane that uses tap water as fuel.

How about you?

 

Maybe if people let science teachers actually teach science instead of having to teach theology, superstition, and pseudoscience, we would have students who actually know what science is.

 

Experimental physicists bridge the gap between theoreticians and engineers and machinists.

There isn't a single intellectual pursuit where the most creative and intelligent outnumber the technicians and floor sweepers.

Scientific success these days is NEVER in spite of the scientists education. Education empowers both opportunity and creativity in science these days.

The fact you didn't "learn" the scientific method in school is perhaps more a sign of your commitment to junior high school science class than evidence of the efficacy of science education

 

Michael Faraday is another example of a self taught scientist who made major contributions to science.

The young Michael Faraday, who was the third of four children, having only the most basic school education, had to educate himself

Although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics

His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.

As a chemist, Faraday discovered benzene, investigated the clathrate hydrate of chlorine, invented an early form of the Bunsen burner and the system of oxidation numbers, and popularised terminology such as "anode", "cathode", "electrode" and "ion". Faraday ultimately became the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, a lifetime position.

Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell.[4] Physicist Ernest Rutherford stated, "When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time

 

It's interesting that you use a space probe and MRI's as examples of the fruits of a formal education because neither of them would be possible without the contributions of a self taught Scientist.

 

“ [Edison] was always in trouble. One day his teacher called him addled(unable to think clearly; confused) and made him sit in the corner. [Edison’s] mother was so upset by this that she took him out of school after only 3 months.

“From then on [Edison’s] mother, a former teacher, taught him at home.”

“Over the next few years [Edison] studied the great inventors, such as Galileo”

“One of Edison’s first inventions was as a telegraph operator when he was just 15 years old. One of Edison's duties as [a telegraph operator] was to send the signal 6 every hour on the hour to show the dispatcher at the next station that he was awake. But the long hours sometimes caught up with him and he would fall asleep. So the scientist in him had an idea. Soon [Edison] had invented a device that hooked the telegraph key to a clock. When the hour struck, the minute hand of the clock sent the message 6 for him.”

Edison had 3 months of formal education an he patented 1,093 inventions.

 

Scientific education while insufficient in the US doesn't hinder innovation in any way. In fact its the lack of scientific education that hurts innovation.

 

Well that right there tells anyone who has actually gotten a scientific degree that you are full of it!
In my physics classes we had to take the equations we derived and use them to solve problems. In my labs we had to conduct experiments, memorization does NOT conduct an experiment.
Either you never studied science or you are deliberately being dishonest.

 

You have no idea what you are talking about.

 

Ewe have no idea what you are talking about.

 

I have a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry and Biology.

There wasn't any creative problem solving in my Chemistry labs.

Chemistry labs basically consisted of following directions

The labs were pretty much just like following the directions in a recipe to bake a cake.

 

It's been known for sometime that people learn new things by associating what they don't know with what they already know in a process known as schemata, but somehow the scientific education does not take advantage of this knowledge.


Rather than learning, (if rote memorization is learning), a bunch of stuff not very well, students would learn more if they were to take the time to learn something really well then use that locus of understanding to learn more things related to that thing.

But not enough time is devoted to learning something really well. There's just too much to learn to take the time to learn something really well. How it works now is you have to memorize one concept without really understanding it and then move on to the next fragment of information to learn all the information that is going to be on the test.

Students would learn more if there was less to learn.

 

It's certainly true that the amount there is to learn is increasing.

To me, that means we need to focus on teaching kids how to learn.

Unfortunately, we delay exposure to science (and math that is interesting) for too long and then we make it too optional. We end up with a population that doesn't understand the fundamentals - like what science is, how statistics works (including in how it must be included in pretty much every public policy decision), etc.

We end up with too many who have no clue as to how to identify fake news, how to include science in public policy, how to continue learning on their own, etc., etc.

Good high schools talk about developing life long learners.