> I don’t really like the idea of blaming others for one’s lack of curiosity about a subject. There are a lot of factors that determine how receptive we are to learning something - current interests, life experience, how developed our brains are, etc
I've met former classmates who got interested in a subject later in life and literally would not believe that the subject had been taught to us in an interesting way in high school. They insisted "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us topic X" or "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us from angle Y" when that is exactly the way our high school teacher taught us. I think when we think back to age 15 we have a hard time remembering how different we were, and we remember things in a way that makes our emotions at the time make sense through our current way of experiencing things.
> They insisted "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us topic X"
Just yesterday was a front page top comment along these lines, that teaching endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts would have made all the difference in grade school biology. But really it would be worth about 30-90 seconds of content in the lesson that day and gone barely noticed and probably not remembered.
Exactly, there is SO much cool stuff in biology that was already known 50+ years ago, even 100+ years ago, and when you're first learning biology, it's all new and fascinating. Unless you don't click with it! And then nothing helps, it's not like there's some magic angle that hooks everyone.
I've met former classmates who got interested in a subject later in life and literally would not believe that the subject had been taught to us in an interesting way in high school. They insisted "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us topic X" or "I would have loved the subject if they had taught us from angle Y" when that is exactly the way our high school teacher taught us. I think when we think back to age 15 we have a hard time remembering how different we were, and we remember things in a way that makes our emotions at the time make sense through our current way of experiencing things.