US Adults Fail Basic Science Literacy

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."

Comments

Re:47%

[Da Fokka]

15% got it right, 47% came close.

Re:47%

[stoolpigeon]

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?

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

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:Plain old basic literacy

[synthparadox]

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:And it's a statistics game...

[superbus1929]

kdawson's the editor. He fucks up everything he touches.

C'mon mods, fire away on me!

Re:easy merit pay

[Gordonjcp]

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%

[RDW]

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

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:! science

[Jaysyn]

" 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...

[cerberusss]

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%

[pzs]

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.

Science is last on the agenda locally

[labradore]

Here in Pasco county Florida, we have no room for science. You guys already know we can't count (ballots) so this should come as no big surprise. My wife teaches kindergarten and my mom teaches elementary science and math in the slightly more learning-friendly nearby Hillsborough county.

Here's the run down for Pasco:

1. No living things more active than moss are allowed in the classroom. No turtles, no hamsters, no fish, no frogs, no rabbits ...
2. Every minute of every day of these kids schooling is planned out and filled with rigid, must-do activities. Yes, even the kindergartners. They are filled with things like a 45 minute "reading" block. 5-year-olds have a attention span of 5 minutes, if you're lucky. Many adults that I know chafe if they have to sit and read or listen for that long. Another great must-do is teacher-supervised exercise periods every day. They are made to walk in circles around the bus loop for a half hour or more. This is not recess. The kids don't get to run around in a field under a tree or play on swings and jungle-jims. They walk. Sometimes they do walking games like follow-the-leader. I personally cannot think of a more asinine waste of childhood. Kids need uncontrolled, low-supervision time to just play but instead we are conditioning them into exercising from the beginning of their internment at school.
3. In Hillsborough county teachers do get merit pay. It's based on test scores and voting. It is highly politicized. Most decent teachers hate it. In Pasco, the teachers were at least smart enough to say no to merit pay, foreseeing the acrimony that it would create because school administration does not have the ability to implement it in an objective and unfair way.
4. Teachers teach the standarized tests. Schools, not students, are being judged by these tests. Florida was held up as one of the models for the nation in no child left behind. It's a complete disaster. There is no single piece of data that shows that the testing and teaching to the testing is helping the kids learn any better. It is, however, creating a great deal of expensive bureaucracy and causing pain for the kids and the teachers, because one of the features of the testing is that if you don't pass, you don't move up a grade and if your school doesn't make sufficient "adequate yearly progress" you get a whole lot more mandatory attention and supervision from the district administration. In other words, schools that don't meet arbitrary standards will get micro-managed for at least a year and become even-more miserable places to work.
5. The standarized tests (FCAT) are focused on reading, writing and math. The science portion has almost nothing to do with real science that kids could learn and teachers could teach.
6. We're facing budget cuts. More administration, more top-down control and more regulation of "education" are not needed. Teachers have college degrees and pass tests to become professionals. They should be treated like professionals. They should be fired when they don't perform and they should be rewarded when they excel. There is no provision for this at all. Good luck improving your science scores.