America dumbs down

[babylonsister]

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?

Jonathon Gatehouse

May 15, 2014


Bill Pugliano/Getty Images


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.

The American public’s bias against established science doesn’t stop where the Bible leaves off, however. The same poll found that just 53 per cent of respondents were “extremely” or “very confident” that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. (Worldwide, the measles killed 120,000 people in 2012. In the United States, where a vaccine has been available since 1963, the last recorded measles death was in 2003.) When it comes to global warming, only 33 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence that it is “man made,” something the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared is all but certain. (The good news, such as it was in the AP poll, was that 69 per cent actually believe in DNA, and 82 per cent now agree that smoking causes cancer.)

If the rise in uninformed opinion was limited to impenetrable subjects that would be one thing, but the scourge seems to be spreading. Everywhere you look these days, America is in a rush to embrace the stupid. Hell-bent on a path that’s not just irrational, but often self-destructive. Common-sense solutions to pressing problems are eschewed in favour of bumper-sticker simplicities and blind faith.


more...

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

[yeoman6987]

1. the problem with Global Warming

is that it is GLOBAL. We have done so much to stop the pollution in our country (yes we still have some way to go), but other countries have become what we were in the 1970's. If we could get the other countries to clean up their acts through the UN then we may have some traction and the folks in the United States may be more willing to do some more to cut emissions and other things that go into our air. The problem is until China stops polluting our air which comes over here, we can do 100 percent pollution cuts and nothing would change. I know I am not a happy camper when it comes to other countries polluting the Earth because we have do great strides to stop it.....

[Archae]

2. Rachel pointed out...

That fortunately, the creationist crap was taken out, and the mammoth is now the state fossil of South Carolina.

But this is nothing new.
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay back in the 50's called "The Cult Of Ignorance," where he took the then-most popular entertainment media, the movies, to task.
A woman is doing research, but she isn't "happy" until she loses the glasses, dumps her research and lets tall dark and handsome sweep her off her feet.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Carlin pointed out

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. There is such a concerted drive to make schools even dumber.

Making more sheeple for the ones who want to lead a moron population.
and it is working.
sigh.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. And Ignorance is so blissfull for many.

Read the same article in the late 50's as a Polly Sci assignment That one article has made some of us to be tuned in on today's and everyday news and events. Information is the life blood of a nation. As we have seen since the middle 50's,our sources of information,now is in the hands of six individuals or Corporations. How sick is that. Ignorance is Bliss!!!!!

[question everything]

6. 2nd posting (not that anything is wrong with it)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024969382