And I can see that two questions could be taken as faith-based (start of the universe, humans developing) and so would receive “unscientific” responses, no matter how much information the person had received previously.
True, but English is the most spoken language…just not natively. So it’s easy to see where the error comes from.
The dominating what-now?
I know where it is. So if we can find one more person who knows without looking, you’ll have to bring that number down.
Just to be a prick, I answer that the sun goes around the Earth and that the universe did NOT start with an explosion. For the former, all motion is relative, and there’s nothing wrong with defining the Earth as the origin of a coordinate system. In an empty universe, the Sun goes around the Earth just as much as the Earth goes around the Sun. For the latter, it wasn’t an explosion, but an expansion. ‘Explosion’ makes it seem like matter was flung out into space by some sort of rapid oxidative process. But in reality, space and time itself was created.
Regarding geographical ignorance: this is true. The reason? Very few US highschools teach geography anymore, and the world news on US TV is pretty pathetic.
I watch the TV Globo News (Brazil), and there is much better coverage of world affairs.
I think that this is intentional-the ruling class in the USA likes the fact that the underlings are kept ignorant-it allows them to keep their grip on power.
And, despite the trillions blown on education, the results keep getting worse.
This is also intentional-the “education” business wants more and more funding-which it justifies by citing the abysmal achievemnt test results.
This is even more frightening. As mentioned in the thread on long distance service, many landline users are older and went to school when they still taught history and geography. I nearly always knew all the answers to the history, geography, and science questions in the original Trivial Pursuit.
Now the sports and entertainment baby boomer edition? Don’t ask.
Re: The geography study, keep in mind that at the time of the survey, the Iraq war was much more in the news and Indonesia had recently been hit by the biggest tsunami in living memory.
No polls, but I would like to share an anecdote. My friend and I were discussing how ill-informed the average person was and he was much more pessimistic than I. To prove the point, he said that we should call his girlfriend - high school graduate, a little college - and ask a not-so-difficult question, but not a complete gimme. I suggested that we ask her to name one of the cities that the US droppped an atomic bmob on in WWII.
Why would be able to point out a country on a map be a condition of having an opinion. I can know quite a bit about a movement, religion etc.. without knowing precisely where they are located on a globe. Their actions are more important to me than knowing exactly where they are on a map.
I could point to The Gambia (it’s easy to remember too, because of it’s inside Senegal)! There we go, 2 out of uhm…a coupla people!
I answered the same to the earth-sun question and the “explosion” question. Badly phrased, and sadly seems in support of emoticorpse’s point, which is disturbing.
Surely you know that ignorance is not at all the same as being uneducated.
Take your example of mercury. If you educate that person and inform them of what it can do to their health it is then up to them to avoid mercury because of its dangers. However, if they then ingest it that is ignorance.
Same goes with language, jaywalking, and many of the other examples in this thread. In some countries people do cross the street not in the crosswalk and it is normal to them. Then they get to the US and cross that way and it is jaywalking. Tell them where to cross and now they are educated. If, however, they decide to cross in the middle of traffic and get squished… well there’s your ignorance.
Point is, people come to the US never having been educated to the laws and ways and standards of this country. That doesn’t make them ignorant. I don’t really know if these polls are any indicators of ignorance… more like lack of education.
I am surprised people don’t know mercury is dangerous. I remember as a kid people were overly concerned about mercury, such that they said breaking open a thermometer to play with the mercury was akin to signing your own death certificate.
Yes, mercury can be absorbed through the skin, and yes it is toxic. But playing with the contents of one thermometer as a child is, quite frankly, highly innocuous.
Yup, except for a few very small island nations, I can name all the countries on a blank world map, including Beckybeckybeckystanstan. Actually only takes a couple hours to learn, and often comes in handy.