Well in very practical terms, it gives you a way to name things you see in the forest, to figure out what is edible, and to understand what has a sentience of its own, similar to yours.

I don’t mean to be snarky, but it seems like you’re very removed from the reality of normal people and parents out there.

There is much more to figure out what is edible and what is not. Considering shrooms alone, it is much more "complicated", so much that there are specialists for that, even, but I agree, could be an useful skill, but not for people who do not even leave the city, I think.

However, they should know the basics such as "not eating potatoes (or its parts) that are green", and so forth, since that is something you run into even if you never leave the city. Food spoilage in general would be useful to teach, but that is the job of the parents, I would say. That said, my teachers in elementary school always used to tell me that they are our second parents. I can see where they were coming from.

I didn’t say there wasn’t. My point is that explaining to kids why they can pick a strawberry from the forest floor, but leave the fly agaric where it is, despite being the same color, is hard enough without going into the phylogenetic peculiarities.

Starting with animals (things that can think like you), plants (things that eat light), fungi (underground webs that bloom above ground), and bacteria (very small things that are sort-of alive, and can both be good for you or make you sick), makes things so much easier and is probably all you need to know for a while.

I agree.

The reality of normal people and parents is that a different basic classification is warranted:

- Humans are what they are;

- Animals are what they are;

- Plants and fungi of the kind you can gather in the forest, and anything else that is macro-scale but doesn't run or swim around, are just "plants";

- Bacteria, viruses, fungi of the other kind, archaea and even single-cellular organisms that could have negative impact on you, are all just "bacteria" or "microorganisms" or "pathogens";

- "Plants" breaks down into "trees", "grasses", "bushes", "shrooms", "flowers", and that's about it;

- "Animals" breaks down into "fish", "reptiles", "birds", "mammals";

That covers about all the biology regular people see, to the extent they care about.

Now, if you're teaching people the biological categorization, any one you will pick will be different from the daily experience of an ordinary person. Like, for practical reasons, whales and dolphins are fish (they look like every other fish and swim in water, and you hunt them with ships), and tomato is a vegetable (you don't put it into a fruit salad), and all that looks like grass is grass (despite genetics telling that some grasses are really just very tiny trees, or some trees are genetically just really big grass, etc.).

Point being, if you're going to teach them a biological categorization, that's already distinct from "normie everyday life" categorization, so you may just as well pick one that's current and useful in biology.

(And once again, this is another case of a non-issue that turns into issue only because people are unable to comprehend and teach the distinction between "is" and "can be thought of as"; the fact that categories are invented by people, are not facts of nature; that their only job is to be useful, and you can have many classification systems for the same thing, useful in different contexts.)

> That covers about all the biology regular people see, to the extent they care about.

Insects and spiders are feeling left out.

That insects and mammals are both Animalia can be nonintuitive for preschoolers.

Parazoa (e.g., sponges), radially-symmetrical creatures (jellyfish, corals, etc.), acoelomates (flatworms, I think), pseudocoelomates (nematode parasites, roundworms), echinodermata (sand dollars, sea urchins, etc), lophotrochozoans (molluscs, some worms, many more).

A 19th century breakdown by Cuvier, influential for a long time, was: Vertebrates, arthropods, molluscs, radiates. (I don't know where worms fit.)

> That insects and mammals are both Animalia can be nonintuitive for preschoolers.

Insects and mammals both walk around. Plants and shrooms don't. Can't get more obvious than that for a kid.