Facts vs. Opinion

[chancellor]

I wish we had an age breakdown of the respondents so we could make some assessments about how we're educating kids, but either way I think civics, statistics and logic are key areas that need to be covered in K-12.

Agree on civics, disagree on the other two. While 88% of high school students take algebra and geometry, there's report after report of staggering failure rates on basic algebra final exams. If we're not achieving overwhelming success with these basic math courses, we need to fix that first before progressing onto requiring statistics.

We need to instill critical thinking and true literacy across social studies and science and technology, and even in math/statistics.

Yeah, we definitely part ways here. "Critical thinking" morphs all too frequently into the fashion du jour or socio-political point of view of a school district rather than anything remotely resembling what I suspect you and I would consider real critical thinking.

[Ken]

I don't actually agree with some of what they called "factual statements."

E.g., "ISIS lost a significant portion of its territory in Iraq and Syria in 2017."
Whether the loss was significant or not is an opinion, not a fact.

I definitely see your viewpoint but I read this as significant as in influential or causal, which is something that can be measured, not opinion based.

And this one was nonsensical:
"Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. federal budget."
What does "largest portion" mean? Does the budget come in factual portions? Who defines the "portions"? Presumably, defining what expenditures go in what "portion", so that you can even compare portions, is someone's opinion.

Largest portion would be equivalent to lionshare, or over half, which, like above, can be measured.

[umjewman]

I don't actually agree with some of what they called "factual statements."

E.g., "ISIS lost a significant portion of its territory in Iraq and Syria in 2017."
Whether the loss was significant or not is an opinion, not a fact.

Phew, glad someone else said it. That was the only one I got wrong and using the same logic. But then when Ken said anyone with a HS education would get all of those correct and Fresno called it terrifying that people would get questions wrong, I got a little self-conscious. Maybe I'm not be cut out for the "hot button" forum.

I'll just go back to conclusively establishing my "OneJ is Ted Cruz" theory.

[Gregg]

Or maybe they were saying that, together, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up >50% of the federal budget? Which I don't know if they do or not. But if that's what they were saying, then that would be a factual statement. I just didn't read the statement that way. They probably should have said "larger portion" (or just "more than half") if they were just comparing Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid to "everything else."

I whiffed on this one.