US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy 1038
TaeKwonDood writes "Do you want the bad news first or the good news? The good news is that about 80% of Americans think science knowledge is 'very important' to our future. The bad news is most of those people think it's up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water (47% if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number) and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of 'Land Of The Lost' episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers' union, but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun."
Re:47% (Score:5, Informative)
15% got it right, 47% came close.
Re:47% (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is in the summary - not the article. The article has it right. The survey accepted anything between 65 and 75 percent as correct. 47% of the people in the survey got it right.
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Informative)
You know, I'll own up to not knowing that it was exactly 47% of the earth that was covered with water. I actually thought it was a lot closer to 70%, and, apparently, so does Google, so its a common misconception. I wonder if one of us isn't counting ice?
The summary isn't saying that 47% of the earth is covered in water. It is a poorly worded attempt at saying that 15% of the respondents got the answer right, while 47% got the answer approximately write. TaeKwonDood is just shitty at writing English.
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Informative)
Poor wording in the article... 47% of those surveyed were correct if you accept a rough approximation of the exact number... which happens to be 70-71%
Re:Plain old basic literacy (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, thats kdawson's fault. If you read the original firehose article by TaeKwonDood you'll see that the bit of incorrect grammar was actually placed in by kdawson.
Re:No surprise, really. (Score:1, Informative)
No it just slowed everyone down to the moron's pace.
Re:And it's a statistics game... (Score:4, Informative)
C'mon mods, fire away on me!
Re:Wha? (Score:3, Informative)
70% is bang on, the (poorly worded) article was saying 47% of respondents got it within a margin of error (65%-75%), 15% got it right (70%).
As usual when you condense a page and a half article to 2 lines, it loses something :)
Min
Re:easy merit pay (Score:5, Informative)
The cream will rise to the top in the private-sector schools, as it does now.
Ah yes, privately-educated Americans. Those fortunate people whose parents paid out most of their income to send them to schools designed to extract as much profit from the education system as possible. This is why I have to teach people who are supposedly of university calibre basic arithmetic, that goes beyond their school's "If Sheneequa goes to McDonalds and buys three Big Macs for $6, and Ernest goes to Burger King and only gets two burgers for $5, then how much better value is McDonalds?" questions.
I really, *really* wish I was joking.
Re:47% (Score:4, Informative)
According to The Register, the calacademy guys who set the quiz originally got this 'wrong' too, basically because the 61-70% and 71-80% ranges they presented split too close to the generally accepted answer:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/californian_science_dunces [theregister.co.uk]
Picking 71-80% would give a 'wrong' answer, even though (e.g.) NOAA gives 71% as the current estimate. The site now seems to have been changed to include a 66-75% range...
Re:Surprise. (Score:3, Informative)
The sentence from the article is jacked up.
Perhaps if they wrote it more clearly, then your comment would be more appropriate.
Re:! science (Score:3, Informative)
" mere names of places...are not geography... know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena (alike of the natural and of the political world, in so far as it treats of the latter), to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes, and, in doing so, to trace out the great laws of nature and to mark their influences upon man. This is 'a description of the world' -that is Geography. In a word Geography is a Science -a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause and effect. "
-William Hughes, 1863
Re:And it's a statistics game... (Score:5, Informative)
People, the parent is not the real kdawson (the editor). An editor has a little slashdot symbol next to his name. This guy has the username "kdawson (3715)" but actually has a very high user ID, 1344097.
He's trolling.
Re:47% (Score:5, Informative)
In programming, if you misspell a variable, the program usually doesn't work.
Usually? Does this mean you've found a programming language where the compiler says 'oh, he's put "conut", but he probably meant "count"' and corrects it for you?
Actually, that sounds like a bit of a nightmare. Autocorrect usually causes as many problems as it solves. [nih.gov]
Science is last on the agenda locally (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the run down for Pasco:
Merit Pay (Score:3, Informative)
Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense... It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun.
That is a false choice. Other options include (a) more rigorous standards, (b) more willingness for teachers to fail students and fight grade-inflation, (c) lessening students' consumerist expectations that they are paying for grades, etc. I believe that I'm consistently the highest-rated teacher where I teach. Yet I would not want merit pay to be implemented.
Here's what the Urban Institute found in a statistical study:
A study by the Urban Institute found some positive short-lived effects of merit pay, but concluded that most merit pay plans "did not succeed at implementing lasting, effective ... plans that had a demonstrated ability to improve student learning." Problems included low teacher morale because of increased competition between teachers, as well as wasted time and money in the administration of the merit pay plans. The same study found "little evidence from other research...that incentive programs (particularly pay-for-performance) had led to improved teacher performance and student achievements.
Here's what the Libertarian Cato Institute says:
Marie Gryphon, an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute, makes some practical objections:
- The system can't simply reward high scores. If it did, it would favor teachers in wealthy neighborhoods whose students came to school with excellent skills. Nor can the system reward only improvement. If it did, it would unfairly penalize teachers whose students were already scoring too well to post large gains.
- Moreover, any money for test results scheme will worsen the problem of teachers cheating on standardized tests to avoid the consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. Teachers willing to erase wrong answers on exams to avoid having their school labeled "needing improvement" will also be tempted by the thought of a personal raise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_pay#Other_opposition [wikipedia.org]
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:3, Informative)
in later stories it came out, though, that holmes did possess much more general knowledge (and especially about copernican theory) than he admitted in "study in scarlet", so it is very much possible that holmes is pulling watson's leg at this point.
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surprise. (Score:2, Informative)
I do find it interesting that many private schools have an annual tuition that's less than the average amount we are paying per student for public schools and manage to turn out higher test scores and better educated/adjusted students.
This misses two points:
1 - Most private schools are partially subsidized by their religious sponsor, so tuition is lower than the actual cost of providing the education. This serves to spread the indoctrination provided to a wider group of people, a goal of all religions. I wonder what the actual cost to provide the education is, on a per student basis. The non-subsidized private schools that I know of are more than $8300 / year / student.
2 - Private schools can give the boot to students who are unable or unwilling to perform academically. They can also expel those who disrupt classrooms. They actually have authority and cannot be sued by parents, since those parents have agreed to a set of terms at enrollment. This then cuts off the bottom of the sample set, and comparisons with public schools that include not only their own bottom performers, but those formerly of private schools, will drag down the overall performance of public schools.
I think that this undermines any idea for a market solution; indeed the point of public education is that since society benefits from an educated populace, society should bear that cost, and that to be equitable, quality education should not be available only to those with money.
No doubt, public schools in the US are not delivering nearly as well as they should, but as an idea, other places have more successful implementations that lead me to believe the problem is in our system, not in the underlying idea.
Lastly, you assertion that private school graduates are better adjusted is questionable. Reinforcing narrow minded beliefs about everything from gender equality, sexual orientation, and racial divisions, and then using guilt as a primary lever of control, does not produce well adjusted individuals. Not all private schools are like that, and certainly not all private school graduates are like that, but to blithely assert that such people are better adjusted is just too much.
Re:Scientific Method What? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, that's correct. No less than St. Augustine warned against this sort of thing:
"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation."
- De Genesi ad literam 1:19-20, Chapt. 19