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I'm of the opinion that exploring issues and themes in fiction was basically entirely useless to me. Where as learning about the history of single payer healthcare, or the lead up to WW1, or any number of topics in history, were at least very slightly useful because they provide context to modern politics.
For grade 9 and 10, we had general science classes that taught a bit of each, then grade 11 and 12 we were given our choice of all 3.
I think learning to think logically and understand a bit about how computers work would be valuable, at least as much as most highschool classes. I might just be over valuing because it was one of my favorite classes though.
I find this fascinating since my experience was quite opposite. Fiction could make issues clear cut in a way non-fiction almost never could.
What do you mean by how they work? I think a lot of the practical operation of computers (opening programs, navigating file systems) are easily integrated into other classes. If you mean more literally how they work (binary, memory, CPU clocks, adders, etc) then that seems more esoteric to me than a lot of other stuff you describe as wanting to be optional.
I was thinking a standard Python 101 class. At the end of it, they should be able to do the easiest problems on LeetCode. I think having a basic idea of how websites and software one level of abstraction down work would be good for people.
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Have you considered that perhaps that's a good reason not to use fiction to think about issues? There's a reason issues often aren't clear cut in non-fiction. The world is rarely that neat and simple. Perhaps fiction encourages us to think unrealistically about issues. Perhaps the author has biases or blind spots that mislead/manipulate the reader into thinking one thing or another. While that often happens with non-fiction too, at least the events in question happened and the author's take can in principle be refuted.
I think it's a good reason not to use only fiction. I think an important part of being able to reason about complex situations is to be able to reason about simple ones. There's a reason logic classes start off with simple syllogisms. One should, of course, always keep in mind that the author has their own views on the topic and the work itself should be examined through that lens. I actually think this last part is an important part of media criticism that I see less often than I would like. Instead of asking whether a work is "good" in the sense that I enjoyed reading it or that I endorse the message it conveys one should think about what message the author is trying to send and whether the work does so in an enjoyable or engaging way. Reading fiction critically is an opportunity to consider how others or yourself might act (or ought to act) in ways that are analogous or dis-analogous to various actual situations one may find oneself in.
I find this a little confusing. What do you take it to mean to refute an author's take? If you mean an author's description of events that have actually occurred, then no one should be reading fiction for that anyway. If you mean refuting an author's take on what ways it would or would not be appropriate to act in some circumstance then it seems to me fiction author's takes are as open to refutation as non-fiction author's takes.
Except fiction can create scenarios that are extremely unrealistic, including in ways that might not be obvious to a young person. For example, a work of fiction that sanitizes violence and its true brutality might lead someone to be more likely to endorse violence in general. Or, conversely, fiction that depicts bad guys being effortlessly incapacitated might lead people to be less likely to endorse lethal violence when it's actually called for. I think, for example, that Hollywood's aversion to depicting gruesome violence (yes, you read that right) contributes to people having terrible intuitions about police use of force. They see movie heroes shooting people in the leg and think that's something police should be doing instead.
The author of a work of non-fiction (say, a textbook) might selectively omit certain other historical facts that would have changed how the reader thinks about a particular fact of history, or they might claim certain information is factual when there's actually some dispute about it among experts, or they might make normative claims that are debatable or use language in clever ways to try to sway the reader to the author's point of view.
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