My 4 year old is always asking “why”.
Why? Because she’s curious.
But sometimes she asks “why” belligerently, and not because she wants to know the answer.
Sometimes, someone asks “why”, and the teacher or authority impulsively assumes it’s asked rebelliously, and answers patronizingly.
Sometimes the teacher can’t answer the question, but also feels that the should have an answer because they’re the authority, and that they’ll lose respect if they can’t answer the question.
Sometimes the teacher is checked out, and simply doesn’t care about the students, but doesn’t want to be found out.
Sometimes the teacher has been beaten down by a bureaucratic system that judges them on irrelevant metrics. And worse, they may be asked to judge students on trivia. Or worse yet, asked to teach students complete falsehoods.
There’s a human side to education, and it’s arguably more important than the education itself. Information is encased in human brains. And even the recorded information is useless unless there’s a brain out there to interpret it. The problem is human beings have their own incentives. We have something to gain from not telling the truth, twisting it, avoiding it, etc.
If you find someone who’s entire village believes in herbal medicine because that’s most of their economy, good luck convincing them their remedies don’t work. To them, the herbal remedies work because they get paid. Are they lying? Are they hurting society? Yeah. But they are probably deceiving themselves and each other.