I mentioned Faraday’s candle experiments and you replied with Jenner’s smallpox experiments.

Taking those as the end points and assuming that safety, practicality, and ethics is somewhere between them (albeit not necessarily at the same place), do you really believe that there isn’t enough below the lowest dividing line to teach kids through high school?

As to the vast numbers of thermodynamics experiments, do you really want to argue that if one doesn’t do them all, there’s no point to doing any of them?

The rest… WTF?

(Although this is the first time I’ve seen 21st c. skills defined.)

What did they do that was so great?

They taught him, of course, how to write paragraphs and how to solve equations, and they did this pretty well, which has given him a good foundation for later learning. That explains how he’s able to excel in school now, but not why.

He loves school and he loves it because of the intangibles embraced at his K-8 school.

The skills that Wagner lists are nice, but I wouldn’t call them survival skills.

I think survival means knowing how to drive.
Knowing the value of deferring gratification.
Knowing how to use Advanced Search on Google.
Knowing how to invest without paying hidden commission.
Knowing how to avoid credit card debt and car leases.
Knowing how to hold your children’s schools accountable.
Knowing the value of healthy food and exercise,
Knowing that blind patriotism can get you killed in a foreign land.
Knowing that your wife’s new clothes always look good on her. Always.

Many scientific results, like the Laws of Thermodynamics, or the Periodic Table were the results of integrating the work of a very large number of scientific experiments done over a lot of time.

I think that actual demonstrations and scientific experiments are a very valuable part of a science education. But I don’t think it’s that easy in both practical terms and in ethical terms to replicate even 19th century science’s answers in a lab alone.

Not so fast.

19th century scientists did a lot of experiments with basically nothing. (I’ve mentioned Faraday’s candle.)

Given that, is it really unreasonable to expect schools to teach science to at least that level?

But a lot of scientific answers about the world are profoundly unsensible, at least from a viewpoint of common sense.
You mean an object in motion remains in motion until another force acts on it? Yeah right, ever pushed a wheelbarrow mate?
Moving a magnet near some metal induces an electric current that makes the lightbulb go on? Sounds like something David Copperfield would come up with.
You can’t make a perpetual motion machine? Who says so? I can do it if I really try!
We can get sick because of invisible little creatures if we don’t wash our hands before preparing food? How about putting out a saucer of milk for the invisible fairies living at the bottom of the garden while we’re at it?
Another surprising one, it looks like different parenting styles have very little effect on how their children turn out once you control for the genetic relationship (this result is not as trustworthy as the others in my list, but many people clearly do not regard it as sensible).

Teaching how to design and conduct scientific experiments is useful in and of itself. But scientific experiments do not always turn up sensible answers, and many questions cannot be answered by experiments that an ordinary individual can perform whenever they feel curious about something, sometimes because of the massive time and expense and sometimes because of safety problems. A good grasp of as many scientific facts as possible is valuable as well. A student should know that salt and all other natural substances are made up of chemicals, as much as an organic potato is. A student should know enough about physics to be skeptical of investors selling perpetual motion machines. I don’t think just teaching an attitude will allow students to make good judgments, because the student doesn’t know what has been left out that is relevant. For example, in physics you can do a controlled experiment where you only change one variable and make confident predictions about what happens there. In medicine you can’t do controlled experiments as no two humans are equal as we have different immune systems. In economics when making statements about the macroeconomy you have to consider where resources come from and what else they could have been used for – physicists often form stupid economic theories because they neglect that (eg they fall for the broken window fallacy).

This is an attitude, it is a way of looking at the world and I don’t necessarily think it can be tested

Well if it can’t be tested there’s no point in trying to teach it. If at the end of a course, you can’t have any idea if kids learnt something then how on earth can you know if you’re teaching anything useful at all? Much better to spend your time on something that you can get at least some feedback on.

I should say I see a big difference between “can’t be tested” and “can’t be tested using a multi-choice test”. Driving skills like three-point turns can’t be tested with a mult-choice test, but they can be tested with a car and a safe area. Driving skills can be taught.

See my post thinking and memorizing for related thoughts.

You are both right and wrong. This attitude is indeed a way of looking at the world It is the best way and it should be taught starting very early in school. But, it is not drowned out by “ramming facts” into kids’ heads. Instead, it is drowned out by ramming the wrong “facts” into kids’ heads. Face it–the kids got those “facts” about Vitamin C and vaccines somewhere. Someone taught them that these ideas are facts.