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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (17041)	5/9/2003 10:00:48 AM
From: zonder	Respond to of 21614

"Diversity and open nature"? :-) Geography and science are common to all students, regardless of their background. And if your education system is so open that it cannot teach these basic subjects, then perhaps it should take a hard look in the mirror... ----------------------------------------------- news.bbc.co.uk Despite a deluge of news about the prospect of a war against Saddam Hussein, only 13% of Americans tested could point Iraq out on a map of the world. Perhaps even more worrying - when confronted with the same map, only 89% of Americans could find their own country! 34% of Americans know the tiny Marquesas Islands, where the last season of reality TV show "Survivor" was filmed, is located in the South Pacific. But only 30% could point to the location of New Jersey. The president of the National Geographic Society, John Fahey, bemoaned the results. "They highlight the urgency of the problem of geographic ignorance and the need to broaden our efforts beyond the classroom," he said. ------------------------------------------------------ nsf.gov Answering a series of 20 questions designed to test basic knowledge, only 50 percent of Americans know how long it takes Earth to circle the sun, and most still can't correctly describe in their own words some basic scientific terms, including molecules, the Internet, and DNA, marking little improvement over surveys conducted in 1995 and 1997. The scientific process isn't well understood either. Only 21 percent of those surveyed were able to explain what it means to study something scientifically, just over half understood probability, and only a third knew how an experiment is conducted. Most of what Americans know about science comes from television and newspapers, the report says, citing widespread consensus among scientists and journalists that important information about science and technology is not reaching the public. It also cites several surveys that show belief in the pseudoscience is commonplace in the U.S. and traces this belief to the entertainment industry.