The Ignorance of America

Rather than contribute to the massive derail going on in the Kansas BOE thread, I thought I'd post some links that don't reflect very well on the state of American education as a separate topic. I am an American, and frankly I'm ashamed of the ignorance (for wont of a better word) that is so rampant in our country. It's not too unusual - other countries have their problems as well, but considering the industrialization and alleged sophistication of our society there's just no excuse for this.

Homer Simpson vs the First Amendment


(These are the same people who don't "believe" in Evolution)

Most Americans Take Bible Literally

From: someone

An ABC News poll released Sunday found that 61 percent of Americans believe the account of creation in the Bible's book of Genesis is "literally true" rather than a story meant as a "lesson."

Sixty percent believe in the story of Noah's ark and a global flood, while 64 percent agree that Moses parted the Red Sea to save fleeing Jews from their Egyptian captors.

78% of Americans believe in Angels

According to a 2005 Gallup Poll, 42% of Americans believe in demonic possession

63% of Americans don't know where Iraq is on the map

From: someone

Nine in ten couldn't find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.

And 54 percent were unaware that Sudan is a country in Africa.

Remember the December 2004 tsunami and the widespread images of devastation in Indonesia?

Three-quarters of respondents failed to find that country on a map. And three-quarters were unaware that a majority of Indonesia's population is Muslim, making it the largest Muslim country in the world.

Forget Africa and Indonesia, what about our own states?

One third of respondents couldn't find Louisiana

1. One-third of respondents couldn’t pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable to locate Mississippi.
   
2. Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.
   
3. Two-thirds didn’t know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.
   
4. Six in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.
   
5. While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia.
   
6. While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East.
   
7. Nearly three-quarters incorrectly named English as the most widely spoken native language.
   
8. Six in 10 did not know the border between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified in the world. Thirty percent thought the most heavily fortified border was between the United States and Mexico.
   

47% of Americans believe in Creationism
According to Newsweek in 1987, "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science..." That would make the support for creation science among those branches of science who deal with the earth and its life forms at about 0.14% 5 However, the American public thinks very differently.

I think there's a disturbing parallel here between the superstitions of our fellow citizens and their abysmal lack of knowledge about simple things like biology, the Constitution and geography. And attempts to ban books and impose religion only make the situation worse. We are a nation of idjits.

I agree the education system in this country sucks, and I'm in it. I make my students study about twice the material as the state curriculem says I should cover. I make my students go way above what is technically required of them. I am also the coach of the football team and I tax my players even more about thier schoolwork. I do daily sitdowns with their teachers and find out exactly what is going on. Student atheletes are supposed to keep a C average to be elligible, but its a B average for my team. I try VERY hard to make my students learn as much as possible. Now I don't claim to have all the answers to the problems, but raising teachers salaries wouldn't hurt the system. As it stands teachers are in short supply because no one wants the job because there is barely enough to raise a family with. I barely make it and one of my kids is out of the house and recently engaged. (sorry proud father moment )

I simply ask; don't blame the teachers, blame those who set the curriculem IE BOE and the states.

We should change our national bird from the Bald Eagle to the Dodo.




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I'm not blaming any teachers. My sister is a history teacher herself, though she's taken some time off to have children, and absolutely LOATHES the No Child Left Behind BS.

Much of the problem comes from people who are not educators - or people who have little education themselves - setting the curriculum.

preaching to the choir with this one

Hear, hear. One of my degrees is in English, which really only has marketability if you enter the education field. I was all set to do that until I realized I'd be poor for the rest of my life. So I now write the most eloquent business memos in my corporation

I think the social climate also intimidates people from being teachers. There's very little discipline in the classroom, teachers are forbidden from so much as touching a student usually and a wrong word could result in a lawsuit.

... and the parents who don't get involved. My mother was a teacher, this drover her insane.

Good on you for upping the standards to a 'B.'

HEHE I have a loophole, the football field. If one of my players is disruptive in class they pay on the practice field. Like I tell them all the time "there is a reason that Student is first in Student-Athlete"

An ignorant population is one easily controlled...

I'm sure that is one reason Bush follows the "All Children Left Behind" educational agenda.

I'd go to an A but thats getting a little tough with their schedules

I trust parents to help about as far as I can throw them.

My mom teaches Pre-K/Kindergarten...she says over and over that the only thing she's seen as a result of NCLB is more paperwork. The school system where she teaches is getting less money than before NCLB was passed.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. (and congrats on the kid's engagement )

As a teacher I would like to ask you how you feel about standardized tests? I have my own thoughts on them but I freely admit they are only my opinions based on my view and not any actual facts.

My daughter struggles horribly to get through any standardized test but she excells in her actual schoolwork. She's awful about remembering dates and details but she has a gift for understanding. You give this child a multiple choice test in which she's expected to remember facts and she'll barely scrape through it. But put a peice of paper in front of her and tell her to explain the reason why people followed someone like Adolf Hitler or what the Native American's views on land ownership were and she'll blow you away with what she knows.

Its my personal opinion (biased opinion I admit) that treating every child like automatons and expecting them all to learn in the same manner is one of the biggest ways our school system fails our kids.

Added to that you have a lack of respect and a lack of appreciation for teachers. You have politicians telling them what to teach and how. You have parents who aren't involved in their children's educations and a system that doesn't really encourage involvement sometimes. (though that may only be my own experience) We have funding being cut over and over again. And then as the OP stated we have religious zealots pushing their own views into the curriculum, books being pulled off shelves because they might be offensive to someone. And to top it off, children all over the country being medicated every morning before school with drugs like ridalin.

I'm only a parent, not an educator. I don't know what the answers are. I don't know what will "fix" the education system as a whole. I only know what works for my own child. But I see the problem getting worse and worse and I'm just very glad that my own child is almost out of the system and I'm not a parent with a child just starting out in it the way things are now.

I'll never forget the recent video I watched (it may have been a link from these forums in fact) showing several female college students all happily and eagerly agreeing to sign a petition to end women's suffrage. *sighs* College students.

Don't get me started on those!! I dispise them. The required EOG's are HORRIBLE!!! I push my students way beyond the curriculem and don't get to test them on it later. I can't have a final in my class that suits the material I covered with the class. I can go on for HOURS! My ideal final would cater towards the students natural abilities, something like
1. Oral presentation on the material covered
2. Standard test (multiple choice, essay, you know)
3. Project or Visual aide type that highlights a particular topic discussed

The students sign up for which they would like to do. This way you will have students who say aren't good test takers being able to still be tested on the material without a disadvantage. If you utilize their strengths they are less likely to get frustrated and give up.


Oh and thank you

Bad question. It doesn't prove bad education it proves cultural emersion. Off the top of my head I'm SURE freedom of speech is on the list not sure about the rest of the list religion might get me my #2. Off the top of my head Bart and Homer. And I have NEVER watched a single episode of the simpsons. I don't use the text of the first amendment enough on a daily basis to know it without taking a moment to look it up. However our culture presents enough Simpsons often enough I could answer that one without even watching it. I don't think my education is bad because of it. I think it just reflects on what people use and are exposed to on a daily basis.



I know that off the top of my head.

I can locate all the requested locations on a map.



Unaware. This info is useful to me how? Whats the largest Pagan country in the world? I fail to see the significance to me.



I'm with the majority on both of these(situation dependent on the first).



Ditto. I think I've read it somewhere. But how is this trivia worth memorizing and retaining for spontanous reguritation? I don't play trivia.



"Native" language? Given the number of dialects of chinese unless you lump them all together regardless if people can understand each other. I don't know what is Russian maybe? Again useful how?



Again unaware although I'm sure that sieve we call the US-Mexico border isn't the most fortified. lol And again how is this useful?

Alot of this stuff is trivia and doesn't impact my daily life and I bet it doesn't impact yours. Unless you work in these fields how much of this do YOU know off the top of your head and why? Now if they sat these people down in front of a computer and gave them 1 min to research each question and the results remained as abysmal I'd be disturbed. But not knowing alot of these questions off the top of your head? I just have to shrug.

ps Atheist so I don't believe any of that religious stuff. But WTF bashing education for peoples religious beliefs? Bigoted much?

hehe sorry, didnt mean to push any buttons

At the moment my daughter is going on the hope that when she gets to college things will be more flexible and she'll be able to learn the way that works for her.

I wonder sometimes if our education system will get worse before it gets better.

EDIT: Read what you added on... Omg my daughter would love you!

WOw.

I'm depressed now.

the students come first, not the school systems ideals.

Which would be ok until you linked the two together. Fact: People spend more time watching cartoons and sitcoms than they do reading.


That's great, Jon, but you're obviously in the minority


If we live in the world, we should at least know some basic things about it. And we wonder why some other nations look on us as ignorant, violent and boorish?


There is a continuum between superstition and lack of education. It's one thing to be devoutly religious. It's quite another to believe in evil spirits and dismiss science.

lol if only they'd let me

Lots of entertainment isn't automatically bad. And sponging up tons of knowledge your not using isn't automatically good.



Since when is the density of a particular religion in countries basic knowledge? And I don't wonder. It's because they are as self centered and prejudiced as we are.



So it's ok to believe your religion as long as you don't believe what it tells you? Christians have this thing they call the bible. It supposedly tells them facts about their religion and the world. Is it that wild for people who believe they are going to "heaven" when they die to also believe there are angels? I stand by bigotry. You don't have to agree they are right but calling them ignorant and uneducated because they believe everything their religion tells them instead of picking and choosing what you want them to believe is bigoted.

And you passed over a question that was directed at you.

Neither is it automatically bad -- in fact, the more rounded one's education (either formal or self-taught), the more they understand the world, the better they function and the more successful they become at pursuing their own goals. You'd argue with those assumptions?


Irrelevant to the point, here.


Don't put your words in my mouth. A lot of very intelligent, well educated people are religious. But most of them (the intelligent ones anyway) have enlightened themselves enough to know that faith ("belief in things not seen" - Hebrews) is something very different than magic and superstition.


I'm not going to engage in the very same sweeping generalizations you accuse me of -- but those who think that a book written over 2,000 years ago by men who had no knowledge of science, natural history, or fossils could possibly have written "facts" are simply victims of a massive, long-standing propaganda campaign by the church. Joseph Campbell did a very good job of explaining the value such myths can have to human culture - respectfully, with understanding and logical analysis of human needs. There's a dividing line between understanding the source and need for those myths and just swallowing them whole.


Hardly. There's a long history of harm done to human societies as a result of superstition. Mentally ill people have been harmed, even killed, in attempts at "exorcism". Women have been burned at the stake or drowned because they were thought to be witches. Ridiculous rituals have been performed that left people maimed or dead because of superstition. Some people even handle poisonous snakes - and get bitten - thinking their magic spell will protect them from harm. Others refuse medical care believing that their faith is stronger than modern medicine, with the result that their child may die from common diseases.

It's far more important than just letting people believe whatever they want. It's setting a standard of reasonability so that we aren't engaging in harm or prejudice over things that are not true.


Actually, I know the world's geography pretty well (I can even zoom to places on Google Earth without looking them up, like I did with Krak Chevalier last week ). If I have a question about the location of a city, I know how to find it on a map. I've read dozens of volumes on science, philosophy, history and culture because I have a voracious appetite for learning. And I have 2 degrees, one of them a Masters. None of which makes me that special, but it does mean I crave knowledge. Any other questions?