I read this, and my only reaction was: :wow: Seriously?? Pretty appalling if you ask me. And please don't call me elitist or something for sharing this, that's not what it's meant to be. And I also want to disclaim that I didn't have time yet to read the Wapo article it references as a source, but I plan to...I just wanted to see what other DUer's thoughts are on these stats...
The title of this article, that an embarrassingly high number of Americans believe that the sun revolves around the Earth, is only one point argued by the Washington Post’s Susan Jacoby, in her attempt to prove that Americans are in serious intellectual trouble, facing a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.
What else is signaling that Americans are becoming increasingly dumbed-down as a society?
* Reading -- of books, newspapers and magazines -- is on the decline. A 2007 study even found that 80 percent of American families did not buy or read a book in 2006.
* Attention spans are declining; Jacoby suggests this is due to television and videos. For instance, between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to a Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.
* General knowledge is eroding. This is evidenced not only by the fact that one in five U.S. adults believe the sun revolves around the Earth, but also many others.
Yet, it’s not bad enough that knowledge is quickly declining in the United States. On top of that, there is an arrogance about this lack of knowledge, almost as if a good portion of the population is saying, “We know we’re ignorant, but we don’t care!”
Consider, for instance, that a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper found that nearly half of young Americans did not think it was necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news was being made. And another one-third felt it was “not at all important” to know a foreign language.
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Sources:
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Washington Post February 17, 2008
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