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."
bah (Score:0, Interesting)
"scientific method" is crap. Everyone knows science is settled by consensus, and if you disagree and try to bring up new evidence, you're just being a denier and should probably be arrested.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
And while we are on that subject, meet Don McLeroy [statesman.com], chairman of the Texas Board of Education:
If you live in Texas, this guy is edumakatin' your kids. Look at the bright side, if they graduate they can fill those lucrative intelligent design research positions that are just bound to open up, ;-)
Re:Those questions seem more like trivial pursuit (Score:2, Interesting)
Understanding what a "year" is is pretty basic (how else can one interpret the fact that people don't know how long it takes the earth to go around the sun?). I wouldn't put that in the 'trivia' category.
Knowing the land to water ratio is marginally more trivia-like; I think the range they accepted as 'reasonably right' is a tad too narrow--but not by much. Anyone who's ever seen a map should be able to know it's well over 50%, but that there's still quite a lot of land -- at which point 70% would be pretty easy to guesstimate. Of course this reqiures (1) having seen (and understood to some extent) the map of the world, and (2) knowing what "percent" means. Sadly, too many people in the US would have trouble with at least one of these.
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
Trivia or not, it doesn't change the fact that is "basic scientific information". Or at least, basic knowledge of the world that is useful, or at least interesting, to have. A "scientific mind" (damn, I'm abusing quotes) starts with a gathering of random but interesting knowledge (as you call, trivia), from that point you start infering and dealing with patterns and such to develop critic thinking.
To fail at basic info like that, shows a disregard for scientific knowledge. And that is foundation of critical thought (together with some philosophy in it).
Science spur from the need of understanding the natural world around us, and that came after knowing some silly facts and asking yourself: "Why is that so?".
Re:Wha? (Score:5, Interesting)
I say we take the trivia out of science education, and put the scientific method in. People need critical thinking skills, and problem solving methodologies a hell of a lot more than they need pi to 20 digits, or to be able name our current geologic epoch (Holocene), or any of a number of worthless pieces of trivia.
Mod parent up. A lot.
That's the problem with school. You learn by rote as if the exact birthdates, or dates of battles or whatever in history, the exact atomic masses of elements in chemistry, or the precise value of e in math, of the speed of light in physics, etc. would mean anything. Most importantly, even if they do, few teachers tell you what it is.
Sorry, I couldn't care less if the battle of Waterloo was whenever. I don't see what it matters. However, I do find it quite interesting how we know when it was. Even more so the more unreliable our sources get. The process of finding out c is a lot more interesting to me than the precise value. The meaning of it, e.g. the difference it makes to physics, is also a lot more interesting.
We are lacking meaning in our education, and yet the human brain is hardwired to look for meaning. If you learn something that means nothing, you are biologically hardwired to discard it. That's why there are so many mnemonics to help you learn useless facts.
So, what is the meaning of it? Does it make a meaningful difference if the earth is 69% or 71% covered with water? I dare say no, so why should I care as long as the number is roughly correct? Heck, "about two-thirds" is detailed enough for 99% of us. There's no meaning in knowing it any more precisely.
Re:Merit Pay (Score:2, Interesting)
On a semi-related note, I think it says a lot when the top sports coach in Iowa (for example) makes over twice as much* as the top professor. It says something about priorities when sports income becomes more important to a SCHOOL than does government and private (charities/foundations) income sources.
*http://bridge.caspio.net/dp.asp?AppKey=3b4e0000f9b8b7j1e3f6h4i3b0a6 [caspio.net] (Look at the whole of Iowa, then look specifically at Johnson County and Story County, which house U of Iowa and Iowa State U respectively. I don't mean to start an argument over the importance of athletics to a university, but it saddens me when the average professor makes less a quarter of a single coach's salary).
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
To fail at basic info like that, shows a disregard for scientific knowledge. And that is foundation of critical thought (together with some philosophy in it).
I disagree. I think understanding and applying the scientific method is the foundation of science, which is just one method of critical thought. Any particular facts a person knows or does not know may be reflective of their opinions about science, or it may be reflective of their particular interests and cultural influences. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that people who fail such a test are able to apply the scientific method. It is probable that people who pass this test, still have no real understanding of the scientific method, how to apply it, or why it works.
I surmise that thinking such as is demonstrated in this survey is a symptom of our broken educational system. It is highly focused upon rote memorization instead of applicable skills and understanding concepts. It's easier to memorize the definition of science than to understand the method. It's easier to teach kids to memorize than to understand. It's significantly easier to test memorization than understanding. It is vastly easier to standardize a test for memorizing a blurb than for understanding a concept.
Don't get me wrong. I think science classes should run through teaching a wide base of scientifically determined fats and likely theories. I just think that should come second to a thorough understanding of the scientific method and how to apply it to determine the truth as well as a firm grounding in hands on experimentation so students can learn that it does work and have confidence in it.
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."
"To forget it!"
"You see," he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."
"But the Solar System!" I protested.
"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Study in Scarlet
The "I" is, of course Dr. Watson, and the "He" is of course Sherlock Holmes.
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Interesting)
A recent study [sciencedaily.com] indicated just that. In order for students to be successful in higher level sciences, they need depth and methodology rather than wrote memory of facts.
Unfortunately, (and I say this a as high school science teacher) our school system is set up in such a way as to mandate the teaching of broad facts. Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we are now rigorously tested on the breadth of what we teach.
This leaves us with an interesting quandary: Do we teach so that students can be successful, or do we teach so that the school can be successful? For the students, we need to teach depth. For the school, we need to teach breadth.
Ideally, we'd do what the students need. Realistically, we do what the school requires, since to fail to do this means a loss of jobs.
Re:Surprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, yea. Metric system anyone? Evolution? Hell, people here were debating on whether or not the theory of plate tectonics was true or false right up to the point where it was definitively proven with satellite measurements!
There are a lot of great scientists who live in this country, this is true. But on the average, we are pretty backward.
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
ok let's start with simpler things.
How many states are there?
How many MAJOR branches of the government are there and name them.
How many stripes and stars are on the USA flag?
Name 3 countries in europe.
Name 3 countries in Asia.
Name 3 countries in south america.
Name 3 countries in north america.
Explain how you can calculate your approximate destination time from your speed and distance.
Guess What. a HUGE portion of Americans will FAIL the above basic test. Many MBA holders and other COLLEGE DEGREE HOLDING people will fail it.
Dont get me started on basic science that you can use daily, math, driving safety, common sense, etc... if you add those in then the numbers that fail rise drastically.
Critical thinking skills? you are asking the morons that travel at 85mpg 6 feet from the guy in front of him to think critically when they cant comprehend that their actions daily on the highway are incredibly stupid? How about being able to do basic math so you understand that the 15% you will save opening that store credit card to buy that item will cost you 30% more even if you go home and pay it off right now due to dropping your credit score like a stone.
Most dont know who their representatives are in local and state government or how to get a hold of them. You need to get off your pedestal and actually spend a week observing people and the incredibly uneducated things they do. It's not out of habit or malice, these people around you really are that uneducated.
I see this amplified from the Exchange students at my daughters school.. The German kids all mention how american school is insanely easy compared to theirs. friends I have in Germany, Italy, and China all also cant understand why Americans cant speak more than 1 language and dont understand what they consider basic math, Algebra and Geometry, Most Americans do not know.
Our schools have been an utter failure for decades. From the public kindergarten all the way up to Post graduate. colleges skew grades so that you get a C for what used to be failing the class. now our "average" students are the faiure uneducated ones.
honestly, I wish Obama had the balls to call out and demand that all truancy laws be reinstated, teachers paid based on merit, and that schools and colleges be forced to stop passing people that should not be.
3 of the highschools around here will give you a diploma even if you cant read. That is not shocking, it's a disgusting embarassment.
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
I would, as number (0) understanding what is and what isn't science.
Obvious example: "intelligent design"
That's more difficult than most people think. Karl Popper recognised that the boundary between metaphysics and science can only ever be a convention (in his introduction to the 2nd edition of "The Logic of Science"). "Falsifiability" only works as an abstract concept; it doesn't actually reflect how science really works in practice or what counts as science in practice. That means that although there's stuff that is decidedly within science (eg, heliocentric solar system) and stuff that is decidedly outside science (eg, ID), there's a huge fuzzy area that may or not be science depending on the definitions you take. There's a discussion here [talkorigins.org] about this problem in the context of evolution. (For those who can't be bothered clicking links -- this is /. after all -- it concludes that evolution is science, because science isn't all about falsifiability).
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
To fail at basic info like that, shows a disregard for scientific knowledge. And that is foundation of critical thought (together with some philosophy in it).
I disagree. I think understanding and applying the scientific method is the foundation of science, which is just one method of critical thought. Any particular facts a person knows or does not know may be reflective of their opinions about science, or it may be reflective of their particular interests and cultural influences.
You can't learn how to critically deduce something if you don't know things. A basic example, using something un-scientific, jigsaw puzzle solving. See, I know a basic fact, "the box contains 5000 pieces", I know another basic fact "borders are flat in at least one of the sides". With those in mind you can start creating a process to solve the jigsaw, you can put on that a few more "unit" data: "it is easier to get 1 pair together than 4", and from that place start deriving how you are going to solve it. Ok, it is a silly example, and not that great of an analogy (I'm at work and tired), but it shows that without any of those basic facts I couldn't work on how to solve the problem.
Mind you, I think "critical thought", "Principals of Western Philosophy", "Mathematical proofs", "Basic Algorithms" should all be classes since the 5th grade (10 years old here in Brazil). You need to teach the kids how to think. But you need to show them some fact too, so they can apply what they are learning in terms of thinking, and their curiosity on a bunch of "silly" trivia and from that onwards learn how to think.
It is unlikely, but not impossible, that people who fail such a test are able to apply the scientific method. It is probable that people who pass this test, still have no real understanding of the scientific method, how to apply it, or why it works.
I agree with you that people who pass this test may still have no understading of the scientific method, but I don't think that someone who can't get those facts can know it. Mainly because they are easy to infer from other things. Take the question about how much water there is in the world. I may not know the number, I may not have ever thought about it, but if I saw a map, and thinking a bit about it, I can make a good guess (which means, we should expect a much higher "close enough" percentage). The fact that so many people have no idea about it, shows not just a lack of trivia knowledge but a lack of deducing capabilities.
Re:Ignorance is diverse as well as widespread (Score:3, Interesting)
My mother went big on feng shui and crystals. Then she reorganized our living room so that we had a lot more usable space and it looked a lot better and stuck a bunch of pretty crystals on top of the shelves where we used to tend to pile things up.
Part of scientific literacy is knowing how to pull the good ideas out of the sea of Woo Woo. Subluxations? No. Massage? Hell yes.
Oh bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
it has nothing to do with that, if you even bring up God in a public school your toast.
The simple fact is, kids test higher at 4th grade than high school because the system isn't designed around students but instead designed around tax dollars.
This has nothing to do with God, it is all about money and power. Guess who has it, not the parents. Hell too many of them willfully forgo it and wonder why junior is dumber than a box of rocks.
sorry, but the stupid cheap "slashdot correct" response isn't even close to factual. If anything those attending religious schools are doing far better... how do you explain that?
Re:Surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
They do this because the good students are winning at a competing status hierarchy, one that does not recognize any achievement in their own.
This is the same reason the jocks hate the nerds.
This is the same reason the fundamentalists hate the scientists.
This is the same reason MBAs hate the PhDs.
Most of human history has been centered around the primate culture of "Look at me, I am the big man, do what I say or else!" Only in the last few centuries has there been a competing culture that has risen up to say "You know, this universe is really a fascinating place. Your monkey games are so boring." And boy, does the first group hate them for it.
Without looking it up... (Score:2, Interesting)
..how much of the planet's total liquid water is available for drinking and farming, i.e., is fresh and clean enough?
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:2, Interesting)
"Opinion question? Whether humans (who have been around for less than a million years no matter how loosely you define human) and dinosaurs (which have been dead for over 60 million years"
And obviously you were there to know this as fact.
As if we can be absolutely sure that carbon dating is accurate to that length of time. As if we can be absolutely sure of anything over 2000 years ago. What, do you have a time machine?
Re:47% (Score:2, Interesting)
but seriously, who cares what percentage of the earth is covered by water? Everyone has some area they know a lot about and can answer questions ad-hoc about it that you could care less about but is very important to them. Sure you can identify things like the percentage of earth covered by water, but how many can cook a meal without using a recipe or box. Or a more important question, how many can say off the top of their head the optimal fermenting temperature for a lager?
Re:47% (Score:5, Interesting)
Now see... once they become proficient, I find that the ESL students have *better* written and spoken English than native-speakers.
I don't know why it is, but native English speakers don't have the rules of grammar and spelling drilled into their heads nearly as thoroughly as every other language I've studied. When I was an exchange student in France, for example, I remember my host family having conversations at the dinner table about grammar, and the 12-year old kid correcting her father on his improper use of the Subjunctive. And she was right!
That kind of thing just doesn't seem to happen in the English-speaking world.
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Aside from that... that isn't scientific litera (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't prove the universe existed five minutes ago either, without relying on some basic assumptions of stasis. As I said, if we have a deity who constantly tinkers with physical laws, this all goes out the window, but then, if you're assuming that, you're already thrown scientific thinking out the window.
As soon as your friend shows how the decay of a radioactive isotope can be significantly affected by external stimuli that could reasonably be expected to be encountered on this planet (for example, the core of a star manages to create radioactive elements, but I think it may be hard to prove this was occurring inside fossilized bones), I'll take her seriously. Until then, she's not thinking scientifically, starting from evidence and forming theories, she's thinking religiously, starting from belief, and discarding evidence.
Re:Factual errors in submission (Score:2, Interesting)
Look, would we allow a person afflicted with severe schizophrenia to serve in public office? No?
Then why would we allow someone with just as severe a disconnect from reality as those who feel the need to interpret the creation stories in Genesis to be bizarre literal truth, as in the world was created in 7 literal (24 hour) days by pure magical decree 6,000 to 7,000 years ago?
Look, and I am NOT making this up, some of these people actually think that men have one fewer rib than women because in Genesis it says that Eve was created from Adam's rib. (The average ('normal') human male and female each have 12 pairs of ribs)
If that doesn't constitute insanity, I don't know what does.
Re:Surprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the Orthodox Jewish community, teen pregnancy (outside of marriage) is practically unheard of. In fact, I have personally never heard of it happening. Yet our schools treat sex as practically taboo in High School. Certainly abstinence is the only "recommended" method.
Obviously we're doing something right (if one considers low teen-pregnancy rates a good thing). Today's super-selfish culture has way more of an influence on teen sex than any method of birth control. Teaching abstinence fails because it implies that there are consequences to one's actions. Modern culture is based on the idea that there are no consequences.
Christianity, especially Catholicism, teaches that there are no consequences to one's actions. (Just be contrite and all is forgiven.) Judaism teaches the opposite. So I'd say that Christianity, rather than religion, is responsible for the mess we're in.
Re:I'm sure you didn't mean that. (Score:3, Interesting)
I googled all of those. They're all claims of seeing "dinosaurs" in the present day (or near present day) with no substantial evidence. There's no body/remains (unlike, say Coelacanth [mongabay.com]) to test. Not even a few clear photos/videos to add weight to the claim. If you call these sort of claims Scientific Evidence, you might as well allow evidence in a murder trial that my friend's uncle's cousin once overheard the defendant say he'd kill the guy.
This isn't to say that it is completely impossible for these animals to exist. Just that the stories aren't supported by any real evidence. And science needs real evidence, not wild tales of monsters.
Re:Surprise. (Score:1, Interesting)
From my European perspective, I think this is one example of what keeps boggling the rest of the world's mind about the US -- how American society, as a whole, can be simultaneously so advanced and so backward. It makes it hard to accept the backwardness because it seems like you, being a leader in everything from science to social progress, shouldn't have an excuse for being so backward. The thing is, these areas of progress and leadership are isolated pockets in an otherwise deeply conservative society. But that can be hard for the rest of the world to understand. I think this is behind much of the world's anti-Americanism.
Re:easy merit pay (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ignorance is diverse as well as widespread (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead, test it formally, with double blinds, hoping that it works (so you don't subconsciously suppress data).
Been done. In fact, it was done by a 9 year old girl (and again at age 11), who basically pwned them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Rosa [wikipedia.org]
Re:I'm sure you didn't mean that. (Score:3, Interesting)
To say that people and dinosaurs certainly did not coexist is based on a lack of fossil evidence
No, it is based on Bayesian reasoning, as follows:
Given that we have many dinosaur fossils from several hundred million to sixty-five million years ago, what is the probability that NO dinosaur fossils can be found that date from less than a million years ago under the assumption that dinosaurs still existed then?
The answer is a very small number, no matter how you mess with the priors, so long as your priors are kept within the bounds of known data.
For example, it may be that there were very few dinosaurs a million years ago. But that would require the population density to be so low that they would have died out long before they reached such a low density, unless they reproduced parthenogentically. But there are no reptiles known that reproduce that way, nor even any fish that are purely parthenogenic, for well-known reasons that are a direct product of the laws of probability. So your priors now have to involve the laws of probability being wrong. And so on.
Unfortunately for creationists and their ilk, Bayesian reasoning treats their silly ideas as ordinary propositions, and assigns all of them extremely low plausibilities using the ordinary machinery of Bayesian logic: state your assumptions, estimate your priors, incorporate your evidence, compute the posterior probability. Under that procedure creationism isn't even worth mentioning--the required priors are so dismally small that no amount of evidence short of God walking up and saying, "I done it" would be adequate to overcome them.
Re:Surprise. (Score:3, Interesting)
Another good reason is simple: the almighty dollar.
I was the product of a private school education from 2nd - 12th. (Catholic parochial) The bottom line was my father (and mother as well) were on me like ants on honey the entire time because it was in their best financial interest to do so. The private schools I was sent to were expensive (though not prohibitively so), and for a simple lower-middle income family, they made a lot of sacrifices to send me there.
If I were to screw around and get kicked out (which the private schools had no problem doing since they had waiting lists), my parents would have lost the $$$ they paid to get me in (non-refundable).
What's the difference with public schools? Parental apathy. I'm a public school 11th/12th grade teacher. I'm triple certified in Mathematics 6-12, Physics 6-12, and Computer Science K-12. (/. is like my second home)
Just today I gave my Precalculus class an exam on Trigonometric Identities. (You know, things like the Pythagorean Trig Identity, Cofunctions, etc.) Out of 28 students in this class (an honors class), I had 7 "Christmas tree" the test in the first 10 minutes (including bubbling 25 answers for a test with only 20 questions on it). I had another 10 beyond that stare at the wall for 45 minutes or so and turn in a test with half the answers left blank. The final mean score was a 28 out of 100. Last week the Honors Physics class dropped me a mean score of 47 on a test on Fluid Dynamics. (Buoyancy, Pascal's Law, Bernoulli's Law, Pressure, etc.)
The root problem? Students don't care, and you can't get parents to care either. I've tried calling 3-5 parents on a daily basis for almost 2 weeks, never receiving an answer - parents have even gone so far as blocking our school numbers on their phone. One parent I reached told me that their child was "too stupid" to go to college (so much for trying to support your child). I've also had 2 of the students miss about 5 weeks of this semester so far because they were out for maternity leave (for themselves).
Now...how do we, as public school educators, combat those problems? With all apologies to President Obama, teacher merit pay isn't the solution by a mile. I could have 3 doctorates, be a textbook author, and be a nationally recognized educator (I'm not, of course), and yet the common reality is you can't teach someone who isn't there physically or mentally, who doesn't have parental guidance/support, and who feels that they will simply get by with a basketball scholarship.
Re:Science is last on the agenda locally (Score:1, Interesting)
That's a pretty good summary of what infects most of science ed in the US (I'm a Canadian who has a PhD in Science Education, do research on and publish on effective science education in US journals, and prepare student teachers to teach high school here).
A few comments....
I think if you want to improve your schooling you could start by improving the requirements of those who are being selected to teach science. The science literacy of your science teacher candidates is abysmal....their university marks are often quite low (in the bottom third of their graduating class) and they have rarely taken any 4th year courses (which teach you to integrate all of the "facts" learned in the first 2 or 3 years and, more importantly, speculate about those integrations). Oh, and the bullet you'll also have to swallow is that most (with some notable exceptions) of your undergraduate science education are considered to be below western academic norms....which is why American students are so under-represented in your own doctoral programs. This means that not only the standards of your incoming science teachers not all that high IN your system, they're also more particularly appalling by international standards.
Secondly....you need to get rid of standardized tests....they really cause you to bottom dwell because they drive your curriculum towards very tiny, memorized bits of knowledge.....go and look up "Bloom's Taxonomy" and use it as a tool to look at most of your standardized test questions and you'll realize they are almost always lower-order questions.
Merit pay, etc., that your new president has proposed as ways of "fixing" the education will have little or no effect.
As a culture, if you want to improve your science education, insisting that research informed practices (and by that I'm including both quantitative and qualitative studies) be used to guide classroom practice would be a huge step forward....but you need a suitable teaching force to do that....and for THAT you'll have to PAY to get people with mid to high marks in university science subjects to become teachers (JUST like European countries do...your country gets what it pays for in teaching...you pay terribly, so your best science students go into medicine, law and engineering...not education....other countries pay their teachers FAR better than you). No other profession has so many non-research-supported practices foisted on it as education does....and in your country, with a science illiterate teaching force, your teachers have no foundation to know any better. The US produces very good research on science education (altho' behind that of the UK, Germany & Australia) and completely ignores it at the policy level. It's shocking.
An earlier poster mentioned the quality of education in Germany....that's possibly because they have research institutes focused on science education beside which yours pale (see IPN....http://www.parsel.uni-kiel.de/cms/index.php?id=kiel).
Like any other profession, you get what you pay for. If you want better teaching, you'd better be prepared to pay for all the things that result in better learning....but all you're doing (and your current president continues this) is apply little band-aid solutions. Conclusion? The US will not change and will continue to spiral downwards.
Don't believe me? Go and read the research on all of this and you'll be shocked....nothing I've said here isn't documented in the academic research literature...but just like global warming most of your policymakers will continue to ignore it (ironic the connection between the issues of science education and ignoring global warming).
Ah well....I'm off next week to offer a workshop at NSTA on data literacy for American teachers (MY government providing funding to help improve the science literacy of YOUR teachers....consider it a form of international aid). If it's like last year, I'll be in a room that'll hold 160 teachers and 8 will show up....the rest will be watching workshops on topics like using jello w