Neil deGrasse Tyson Deserves to Get Called Out When Attacking Our Education System

photo from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Facebook page

There’s no doubt that celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is an inspiring speaker and science advocate. He has some great messages to share. However, it continually infuriates me to see high-profile public figures like Tyson blindly criticize America’s education system and wrongly scapegoat schools as the ultimate source of our society’s ignorance.

Over past few years, I (and many other people) have noticed Tyson making all sorts of ridiculous pronouncements, especially on Twitter. I believe some of the most harmful and wrong-headed statements, however, are those Tyson has made denigrating our education system. This tweet from last year about “flat-Earthers” was particularly maddening:

Tyson tweeted “The rise of flat-Earthers in society provides some the best evidence for the failure of our educational system.”

This tweet was wrong on so many levels, I just had to respond. I wrote:

“People love to lay all the blame on schools with stuff like this. In fact, it’s our culture as a whole that’s rank with anti-intellectualism. If you think that it’s ONLY teachers who need to show kids the value of objective fact—not families, not cultural institutions—that’s disastrous. Seriously, Neil—OF COURSE schools tell and show kids Earth is round. But our culture doubts established knowledge and loves conspiracy theories.”

Let’s break down some of the ways that Tyson was ridiculously off-base:

1. Flat-Earthers don’t exist for lack of teachers saying that the Earth is round. Indeed, I can hardly imagine that a single person who grew up in the United States—let alone anyone who grew up attending U.S. public schools—would never be exposed to the idea that the Earth is round. It’s a complete fallacy. Clearly, flat-Earthers aren’t flat-Earthers because teachers failed to ever tell them anything different; flat-Earthers exist because they actively disbelieve and dispute the information they are given by authorities, including teachers.
2. Conspiracy theory culture is not created by the education system. Most teachers spend their entire careers encouraging students to seek out factual information, gather evidence, look for biases, and examine multiple perspectives. In spite of this, there will inevitably be some students who end up believing in pseudo-science or conspiracy theories based on faulty evidence or no evidence at all. Placing the blame on schools for this result is not only insulting to educators’ work, but willfully ignorant of the media outlets and other cultural milieus that promote conspiracy theories.
3. Schools cannot be blamed for their own delegitimization. If kids grow up to be flat-Earthers, it’s because they scorned basic facts they received in school — and that means something’s wrong with our culture, not our schools. American kids are growing up in a society that constantly bashes schools and teachers as inadequate. Surely it can’t be teachers’ job to both educate students and constantly re-justify themselves as legitimate sources of knowledge — right?

I think much of the blame for this delegitimization of schools lies with the sort of language that’s been in common use in the United States among politicians, media, and the wider public for decades—that American schools are “failures” and that they are “failing” students. That’s the exact same language Neil deGrasse Tyson is using, blaming schools and teachers for a phenomenon well beyond our control.

I think there are two basic steps all of us need to take in order to combat these types of damaging statements:

1. Always clarify that schools are not the ultimate source of our society’s beliefs, our knowledge, or our ignorance. We all know that a person’s education never begins in kindergarten, and it’s never confined to the classroom: It starts at home, and it expands to include friends, mentors, and myriad cultural influences. No one believes everything they believe solely because it was taught to them in school, and teachers will never be able to drive every last wrong-headed notion from young people’s brains before they graduate. Life just doesn’t work that way.
2. Continue to highlight all of the positive things that public schools contribute to our society. Look at the students conducting incredible science projects in school. Think about everyone who learns useful new skills and prepares for future careers in vocational courses. Consider the kids saving endangered indigenous languages through what they do in the classroom. Watch the teenage activists working to change our society right now, using talents they developed in school. We can all tell countless stories showing how our education system is not a failure at all.

Millions of Americans graduate from school each year, going on to live productive lives and do amazing things. The vast majority should do a pretty good job of taking well-established knowledge into account when forming their beliefs about the universe—and they will never believe the Earth is flat. The existence of a minuscule number of “flat-Earthers” proves nothing about the quality of our schools.

In light of the evidence, I hope Neil deGrasse Tyson is willing to change his views, and his tweeting habits.