I'm not sure what you are arguing here. What would a world look like without simplification? You want people to remain in complete ignorance until they are judged at some point to be "ready" to learn the complete truth about something? That seems like an absurd viewpoint to me.
Besides, your comment ignores the fact that people, in the absence of explanations (right or wrong) will make up their own model of how things work. That model is just as hard to unlearn as an incorrect view they may have been taught by an instructor. In fact, they are probably harder to unlearn because they are based on the persons own experiences.
All learning involves correcting and building on earlier concepts, there are no "tabula rasa". What is important is that people confront and integrate their own preconceptions as part of learning.
The National Academies Press book "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School" is a good, accessible introduction to these concepts. It's on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/.
This is a relevant passage: "A logical extension of the view that new knowledge must be constructed from existing knowledge is that teachers need to pay attention to the incomplete understandings, the false beliefs, and the naive renditions of concepts that learners bring with them to a given subject. Teachers then need to build on these ideas in ways that help each student achieve a more mature understanding. If students' initial ideas and beliefs are ignored, the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends."
I'm not arguing that we should not simplify instruction at lower levels; I'm simply arguing that there are ways to simplify without creating inaccuracies: to avoid using leaky analogies, for instance.
Besides, your comment ignores the fact that people, in the absence of explanations (right or wrong) will make up their own model of how things work. That model is just as hard to unlearn as an incorrect view they may have been taught by an instructor. In fact, they are probably harder to unlearn because they are based on the persons own experiences.
All learning involves correcting and building on earlier concepts, there are no "tabula rasa". What is important is that people confront and integrate their own preconceptions as part of learning.
The National Academies Press book "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School" is a good, accessible introduction to these concepts. It's on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/.
This is a relevant passage: "A logical extension of the view that new knowledge must be constructed from existing knowledge is that teachers need to pay attention to the incomplete understandings, the false beliefs, and the naive renditions of concepts that learners bring with them to a given subject. Teachers then need to build on these ideas in ways that help each student achieve a more mature understanding. If students' initial ideas and beliefs are ignored, the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends."