The success of National Geographic’s Cosmos might appear to offer a glimmer of hope that America is ready to break free of the anti-intellectualism movement that has left this country in the wake of other developed nations when it comes to scientific literacy.
But the deep structural and cultural obstacles in American society for attaining intellectual enlightenment will erase any short-term good news moments like popularity of a TV show.
America remains a scientifically ignorant nation for two reasons: the resurgence of fundamentalist religion during the past 40 years, and secondly, the low level of science education in American elementary and secondary schools, as well as many tertiary colleges.
While television ratings for Cosmos may have stunned media critics and your average fundamentalist, “Americans continue to poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth.”
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7 comments:
The facts are.. global warming is frying our brains! Al Gore told us so... right after he invented the internet.
Duh.all the blame is because of the public education system...school voucher system would solve this problem...it obvious giving all our money to GOV for schools does not work
Americans aren't dumb, they are lazy. To lazy to seek the truth and stay informed, but they can tell you who won the big game or american idol. God help us.
10:35 - some of the money ends up in the Democrats coffers via union dues - too much gets spent at Goin' Nuts and too little is actually spent educating the kids....
LAZINESS = IGNORANCE!!!!! The new American Generation is tooo lazy to care about anything! Let alone getting an Education. they are soo used to sitting back on their lazy a** and having everything handed to them!
Finally,an enlightening article that puts charter schools in their place.
1059 absolutely right.
1209, this is not a "new" generation thing. Seems to me it is the generation in the late 40's through 60's that are calling the shots through almost every sector of our lives.
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