America Dumbs Down

[killer cacti]

 

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/

 

 

 

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?

 

 

Lots of good stuff in here. Well worth the read.

 

 

South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

 

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

 

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.

 

Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

 

 

In response to the South Carolina bit, here is a picture of their state capital. Does any of this surprise you?

 

Lol. False. The confederate flag no longer flies on top of the State House. Up until 1998, it did.

[BigRedBuster]

Just something I personally find really funny. I have expressed that my father is 78 years old and is convinced the entire world is going to hell and our tyrannical government is to blame for everything. Obviously, he believes our educational system is partly to blame for it because it is so horrible...and...of course, the federal government is involved. After all, he taught school in a one room school house and taught every single grade and never needed to take a day off for "teacher in service"...bla bla bla.....

 

He will be around every once in a while when my kids are doing homework. Every single time, he thinks he is going to sit down and help with a problem in math. He always looks at it for a long time....gets up and expresses that he has no clue what it's even talking about.

 

OK Dad...if schools were obviously Sooooo much better back then, and teachers were sooooo much better.....why can't you help an 8th grader with his math?

[deedsker]

Progression of basic knowledge. Your kids will be expected to know more than you and their kids more than them. So on and so forth.

 

Each generation should know more than the last no matter how it is taught. Doesn't necessarily mean your father is right or wrong.

[BigRedBuster]

Progression of basic knowledge. Your kids will be expected to know more than you and their kids more than them. So on and so forth.

 

Each generation should know more than the last no matter how it is taught. Doesn't necessarily mean your father is right or wrong.

LOL....I understand that. If you sat and talked to my father about it for 15 minutes you would understand that he OBVIOUSLY was teaching those kids much more than any lazy school teacher is now.

[tschu]

Creighton Duke is 100% right here, btw

 

(yeah never thought I'd say that, but it's true)

 

Our education system isn't set up properly nor funded properly, and it's resulting in our workforce being dumber (shock word, but true) and falling behind in the world economy. It creates a huge burden on the average college graduate financially, and fails those who don't go to college in that they aren't prepared for a trade.

 

And it also still remains that students whose parents can afford to support their education and support them through college will go further than those whose parents don't have that ability. It's exacerbated now with how expensive a college education is. Hooray upward mobility! Yeah right.

[killer cacti]

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/america-dumbs-down/

 

 

 

The U.S. is being overrun by a wave of anti-science, anti-intellectual thinking. Has the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind?

 

 

Lots of good stuff in here. Well worth the read.

 

 

South Carolina’s state beverage is milk. Its insect is the praying mantis. There’s a designated dance—the shag—as well a sanctioned tartan, game bird, dog, flower, gem and snack food (boiled peanuts). But what Olivia McConnell noticed was missing from among her home’s 50 official symbols was a fossil. So last year, the eight-year-old science enthusiast wrote to the governor and her representatives to nominate the Columbian mammoth. Teeth from the woolly proboscidean, dug up by slaves on a local plantation in 1725, were among the first remains of an ancient species ever discovered in North America. Forty-three other states had already laid claim to various dinosaurs, trilobites, primitive whales and even petrified wood. It seemed like a no-brainer. “Fossils tell us about our past,” the Grade 2 student wrote.

 

And, as it turns out, the present, too. The bill that Olivia inspired has become the subject of considerable angst at the legislature in the state capital of Columbia. First, an objecting state senator attached three verses from Genesis to the act, outlining God’s creation of all living creatures. Then, after other lawmakers spiked the amendment as out of order for its introduction of the divinity, he took another crack, specifying that the Columbian mammoth “was created on the sixth day with the other beasts of the field.” That version passed in the senate in early April. But now the bill is back in committee as the lower house squabbles over the new language, and it’s seemingly destined for the same fate as its honouree—extinction.

 

What has doomed Olivia’s dream is a raging battle in South Carolina over the teaching of evolution in schools. Last week, the state’s education oversight committee approved a new set of science standards that, if adopted, would see students learn both the case for, and against, natural selection.

 

Charles Darwin’s signature discovery—first published 155 years ago and validated a million different ways since—long ago ceased to be a matter for serious debate in most of the world. But in the United States, reconciling science and religious belief remains oddly difficult. A national poll, conducted in March for the Associated Press, found that 42 per cent of Americans are “not too” or “not at all” confident that all life on Earth is the product of evolution. Similarly, 51 per cent of people expressed skepticism that the universe started with a “big bang” 13.8 billion years ago, and 36 per cent doubted the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years.

 

http://www.wach.com/news/story.aspx?id=1049732#.U4TAeZRdVyR