More depressing stats
July 6th, 2007
Way back in February I wrote about some depressing statistics. In a nutshell, fully one third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Today, I've found some more depressing statistics that seem at least tangentially related:
One in five Americans believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Not only that, but fewer than 33% know that DNA plays a role in heredity, and only 10% know what radiation is. Most American don't know what a cell is.
In addition to being a complete disaster when we're expecting people to understand things like the relative merits of nuclear power, 'irradiated' milk, and stem cell research, this is obviously a complete failure in our education system. What we need, is some way of encouraging people to actually want to learn. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that. Clearly we need to put more thought into the way our education system is working beyond the fairly inconsequential concerns of public vs. private and standardized test scores.
Jesse Legg wrote:
on Friday, July 6th 2007 at 2:03 p.m.
Welcome to Dick Cheney's America.
Chris wrote:
on Sunday, July 8th 2007 at 5:59 a.m.
In response to Jesse Legg: Could you explain how Dick Cheney being elected Vice President caused the \depressing stats\" mentioned in the original article? Seems to me that folks who are \"ignorant\" (sorry
Rebecca wrote:
on Monday, July 16th 2007 at 3:28 p.m.
The teacher's unions are probably the strongest lobbying power in DC and they run the show. As long as the NEA runs our public schools, what you see is what you will get. I gave up a teaching career a long time ago when it was deemed more important to understand the feelings of students than to require them to learn and accept responsibility for their actions.
Tenure: how many other professions guarantee you a job regardless of your performance? I could go on for hours on this subject, but will spare you.
Jesse Legg wrote:
on Friday, July 27th 2007 at 9:29 a.m.
Welcome to Al Gore's America.