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| For this I spent nine years in prison? |
A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to a report out Friday from the National Science Foundation.
The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.
In the same survey, just 39 percent answered correctly (true) that "The universe began with a huge explosion" and only 48 percent said "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."
This, THIS, is what the conservatives have done to education in America.
These are not even hard questions.
Bill Nye is right, this country is going down the crapper, and the solution is more of this:
But but but Benghazi! I thought that liberals were the only ones allowed to teach in public schools (funny, I don't recall any of my teachers in the 50's and 60's even bringing up religion to politics, except my 6th grade SS teacher who hated the Vietnam War and told us so, and was gone the next year..) This is really sad. The projection on the right is foul and dangerous. THEY are the ones endangering our way of life, not progressives.
ReplyDeleteMy SIL asked me once how I could bear working with "all those liberal professors". The only ones I've ever heard express a political thought are the right wingers- I have no idea (and don't care) what the others think. Where do they get these ideas? (Anyway, I AM the liberal professor.)
DeleteSometimes I weep for the ignorance in this country. Most of these poor creatures probably think dragons will get them if they sail too far from American shores.
ReplyDeleteO/T
Just saw the interview with the neighbors of that psycho who killed Jordan Davis. Absolutely frightening. Dunn was a text book murderer in waiting.
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/02/shocking-interview-michael-dunns-neighbor
Lots of swinging dicks out there, the kinds that say Todd Palin would kick ass if any of Sarah's critics were to cross paths with him. Ha ha.
DeleteActually, the “Big Bang" is better understood as a fracturing of symmetry, not a “huge explosion" (too many presuppostions in that picture).
ReplyDeleteHuh?
DeleteI thought the Big Bang got the party started via the inflationary period. All the matter and energy in the universe was set on an inertial trajectory consistent with the equivalence principle and Einstein's theory of general relativity and this is when the precise and regular form of the universe's expansion had its origin (that is, matter in the universe is separating because it was separating in the past due to the inflaton field).
But, NastyLiberal, I could be wrong. This is what makes science interesting.
And it's why I love it.
It could be a little more complicated. Taking in the “wretched refuse” meant you weren’t getting educated nobility or the people likely to join them (knighthood). You got urbanites and peasants, and they did pretty well for three hundred years, but I think they’re topping out and falling into a sort of Dark Ages.
ReplyDeleteI saw that with my first husband. He’d had about the same public education as me, and he didn’t do badly in school, but I suspect he crammed and then promptly forgot everything. He had NO interest in science, none at all. Little geek that I was, I was horrified to learn he’d never absorbed the difference between rotation and revolution. He knew nothing!
Well, even then-Senator Barack Obama didn't get the difference twixt rotation and revolution (nor did his proofreaders): see Audacity of Hope). While I'm nitpicking? Earth doesn't really “go around the Sun," either (time to break out again that nifty gif of the planets chasing the traveling sun, Gryph).
DeleteThe Earth & our solar system do not actually orbit the Sun as taught, "Rather", We follow or better still, are dragged by the Sun in a Spiral Pattern through the universe & time.
DeleteAn orrery is a frozen snapshot of this fact.
Now hang on to your chair. The Earth spins, orbits the Sun, our solar system orbits our galactic core, and our galaxy itself is moving.
In other words, you are hurling through space at 2.7 million MPH (4.4 million KPH) even though it feels like you are sitting still.
Thrilling!
Eric Idle has a nice song about that
DeleteSTOOPID AMERKINS!!!!
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows the Greek god Helios drives his gleaming Chariot of the Sun across the sky each day (and sleeps in a fabulous palace made of pork sausage and hard rind cheese at night.)
All of this nonsense about 'orbiting' is just part of Obama's socialist plot to redistribute wealth.
And take away our guns and Disneyworld souvenirs, also too..
Silly me, and I thought all the planets and sun revolved around Sarah Palin.. *shrugs*
ReplyDeleteI’m sure she’s convinced her children of that, “Mother will provide.”
DeleteJust saw Bill on Meet The Press. Huge disappointment.
DeleteMarsha Blackburn just babbled all over him.
David Gregory is a POS.
He should have remembered that you can't argue with ignorance.
DeleteThe scary thing in this survey: IT WAS TAKEN TWO YEARS AGO!!! In the meantime, I am pretty sure, Americans have become even more stupid. :(
ReplyDeleteBristol, Willer and Pipes learned in home school the world is flat and their grand daddy had dinosaurs for pets when he was young.
ReplyDeleteI saw an orrery in elementary school. I was delighted. Have other people seen them as well, or was I just lucky?
ReplyDeleteHad them from first through sixth grade. Couldn't play with them until fourth grade, though.
DeleteThe article states that 26% answered incorrectly, so it is 1 out of 4, instead of 3 out of 4. However, it is disturbing that anyone in America got the answer wrong!!
ReplyDelete@921
DeleteRead the headline again.
I think you'll find Gryphen just put a spin on how he expressed it but still got it right, despite the fact that - according to my highly reliable anonymous sources - "Gryphen" is probably not even his real name.
Ｒｅａｄ ｔｈis part of the ｔｉｔｌｅ ｍｏｒｅ ｃａｒｅｆｕｌｌｙ：
Delete”Good news, 3 in 4 Americans realize that the sun does not revolve around the earth。”
Is it due to a lack of science education ... or simply willful ignorance -- i.e., a dogmatic denial of anything that conflicts with an ultra-orthodox interpretation of the Bible?
ReplyDeleteThe latter frightens me more than the former.
DeleteThis is why they vote against their own interests, they know nothing and just do what an authoritarian tells them. Unfortunately they are harming everyone else.
ReplyDeleteNew York State Regents diploma state-mandated laboratory requirement is 1200 minutes of hands-on laboratory with satisfactory laboratory reports.
ReplyDelete20 hours of hands-on lab work is not much. If the standards are so low, there's no reason for students to do anything other than cruise through science class, vomit up the info for the test and FORGET it all.
The average adult IQ for Americans is 100. Not very impressive, however we need service industry workers and unskilled labor that doesn't require a high IQ, in fact when people of higher IQ work these jobs they suffer lack of job satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteNot everyone can excel educationally and not everyone is able to grasp difficult scientific concepts. It takes all levels of intelligence to make modern life happen.
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun is not a difficult scientific concept.
DeleteSilver lining - my kid is going to come off as some sort of super genius compared to these dolts when it comes to college scholarships.
ReplyDeleteOne in four is still too many. We've got to do more to become competitive with other countries. We used to watch a comedy called "Third Rock From the Sun", and one of my son's friends happened to watch many shows along with us. It wasn't until the third season that he had a "eureka" moment when he realized the third rock was the planet earth. I was surprised because he's pretty smart and a quick learner.
ReplyDeleteSo of the 74% who answered the sun-earth question correctly, how many just guessed right, and how many actually knew the answer?
ReplyDelete