The state of science education in the United States is appalling and it’s only getting worse. Thanks to stupid policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act which places an exaggerated emphasis on testing to determine whether kids are learning anything resulting in schools “teaching to the test” and cuts to science education over the years, most people these days fall far short on basic scientific knowledge. It doesn’t help that there has been a systematic attempt by the Far Right in this country to undermine the teaching of well established scientific theories such as Evolution. Is it any wonder that the Discovery, History, and Science channels are resorting more and more to running shows like Ancient Aliens and The Supernaturalist?
It’s helpful to understand just how bad things have gotten so the folks at The Pew Research Center take the time every so often to poll Americans with a simple science quiz to see how they do. When I say simple, I mean ridiculously simple. There are 13 questions and only one of them made me pause for more than half a second to think about the answer.
You can take the quiz yourself here: Do you know more about science and technology than the average American? Go ahead and take it before proceeding with the rest of this entry. I’ll wait.
Done? OK, how’d you do? I got 13 out of 13 correct. There were several questions that I couldn’t believe they were seriously asking. Surely everyone got all of these questions correct, yes? According to the results I scored better than 93% of the Public and the same as only 7% of other quiz takers.
Granted I’m probably more scientifically literate than the average person just because it’s a topic I’m interested in, but it’s not like I spend all my time studying science books nor are these questions in any way esoteric. The vast majority of them were laughably simplistic. If you’re paying attention at all you should get all 13 right.
When you get into the demographic breakdowns of the quiz it gets a little more interesting. Men did better than women on most of the questions except for those related to health. Generally speaking, the more education you have the better you’re likely to do — “collage graduate” scored better than “some college” which was better than “high school” — but it was surprising that only 20% of folks know which gas makes up the majority of the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s middle school science class for crying out loud. And the older you are the more likely you are to score low (probably because you’re beyond the point of giving a shit).
So what do we do to fix this problem? Hey, how about we get rid of that stupid No Child Left Behind program and allow teachers to, you know, teach and then properly fund education and science initiatives?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Like that has a chance in hell of happening.




