At my school we WERE verbally taught to "question EVERYthing" ... but anyone who actually questioned ANYthing would be immediately ostracized

ostracized by teachers who universally thought their knowledge is what gave them teaching authority

they don't have the skills to teach you how to LEARN - they only have the skills to teach you to repeat back what they've been told

in fact that's the only authority they've been given by the state that pays them in the first place!

Your job as a teacher is purely and simply to make the kids say what the district and state laws require you to make them say and that is your only authority. Anything you do that results in kids NOT saying what we've told you to make them say is grounds for being fired.

Question what your teacher says? In the teacher's eyes, you're now effectively questioning why they should get a paycheck.

Even the most sympathetic teachers will only let questioning go so far. You'll still be required to say everything they told you to say on the test. You'll still be told to limit your questioning so you don't "distract" the other students.

You'll still be told "any questioning should be done on your own time, and no matter how good your evidence we're not going to change what we teach in class".

ostracized by students

who ...

... have friends that don't question and not losing their friends is WAY more important to them than basically literally anything else in their life

... don't want to agitate their teachers -- students already don't want to be there AT ALL, why in the WORLD would they voluntarily make their suffering worse while risking the ONE benefit they're promised -- college and a higher potential income and more importantly promised social STATUS

Nobody is risking promised STATUS just to be able to question things they basically believe are mostly accurate in the first place.

Can this be fixed? Can we teach kids to ask questions?

Probably. Maybe. But here's the rub -- the incentive to NOT question anything is inherent to the very way schools are structured.

The only real solution is to pull your kids out of school.

There are alternatives BUT 99% of them are different in every way EXCEPT the important parts.

Even something like Montessori is going to expect you to fall in line with the pathways they've pre-decided are acceptable or whatever beliefs they may have locally at the school.

You could even argue that this incentive to not question is built into all society and that even homeschooling is subject to incentivize not questioning because, at the end of the day - it takes a VERY courageous and exceptional parent to allow their children to disagree or question anything that the parents consider "important" -- which are really the things worth questioning the most!

Or alternatively a very courageous and exceptional kid.

Either way it's pretty rare. And while it probably can be taught, I highly doubt that it can be taught en masse or that even if it could -- that enough people would have the will to take it far enough to matter.

But that's a whole other topic.

-- Tl;Dr sorry that was a mega rant lol

I HATE teachers -- I can count the number of good ones I've met on one hand and NONE of them work for a school, public, private, home, university, or otherwise.

I've met a few knowledgeable people in those institutions. And a few that can teach a specific skill in a route way that learning a specific atomic skill sometimes requires.

But actually teaching to LEARN? Very. VERY. Rare. And often imitated to appear to do as such on the surface but not in any way that could disturb the status quo.

.

Best you can do is set an example. Question everything. Especially question what you are CERTAIN is true or be a slave to your own bias.

Have faith that God will take care of the rest.