Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Why we should teach astronomy" video.

Despite what some folks would have you believe, Pluto is as much a planet as the Earth is. Neither one actually qualifies as a planet under the current set of criteria. The Earth hasn't cleared it's orbit, so not a planet.
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Why? It's not exactly relevant to daily living and there's a bunch of other stuff that people need to know now that wasn't necessary 20 years ago.
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It's not really, it's a matter of priorities. Astronomy isn't relevant to most people now and unless the technology to move quickly between planets is developed, it never will be. I personally, think it's more troubling how few people realize that the Earth probably doesn't qualify as a planet at this point due to it not having cleared it's own orbit.
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Why? I'm sad and frustrated by people not knowing things that are actually important. For example, not understanding how compound interest works or the impact of tax policy in the most basic sense has on the way that the economy structures itself in response. Astronomy is interesting, but it's really not terribly relevant to people that aren't involved in space exploration and likely won't be relevant for decades to come.
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In what sense? Unless they're in a field where astronomy is relevant, I'm not sure that it really matters much.There are so many other things that are important and relevant to policy on this planet. Perhaps if space travel to other planets becomes practical that might change, but right now it shouldn't be super important with all the other stuff to worry about.
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@hikari4415 It's one of the reasons why the new definition they used to demote Pluto was so dumb. It's also a detail that a lot of people don't know about. Ultimately, whether or not the Earth is a planet isn't super relevant to people that aren't involved in astrophysics or something related.
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@zetanax1041 In the future this may become a problem, but astronomy is really only relevant to a small portion of the population. Mainly the folks that are sending space probes out into the universe. If we get to the point of being able to send people to other planets, then it will be relevant. But for now, I'm not sure that everybody needs to know anything about everything.
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Add enough stuff to the curriculum and if you're lucky, irrelevant things like this will be forgotten rather than things the students really need to succeed in life. Sad, but true.
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Yes, but why on this topic? You could say that about basically every subject ever, but there's only so many hours in the day and learning about one irrelevant subject isn't better than learning about the latest craze on the various social networking platforms.
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So, what happens if you do need to do some division and don't have a calculator near by? That is a problem that does still happen occasionally.
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