If American students are told much at all about climate change, there's a good chance what they're being told isn't true much less informative.
In the first national survey of classroom science teachers, researchers found there was short shrift given to the teaching of climate change in public middle and high schools in all 50 states.
The survey of 1,500 teachers, published inScience on Thursday, found most pupils spend only an hour or two in the course of an academic year learning about climate change in middle and high school – and much of what they are taught is confusing or simply wrong.
Only 38% of American schoolchildren were taught lessons that adhere to the scientific consensus that climate change is largely the result of the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the National Centre for Science Education found.
Some 30% of teachers spent less than an hour on climate change during the last academic year, the researchers found. In higher grades, much of that time was spent going over old material without introducing more advanced material.
The blind leading the blind.
4 comments:
The blind leading the blind about sums it up. Now, persuade me that this is a change from long term normal.
Well as far as the quote from Neil goes, it really is both.
I've always found that the ignorant, scientific illiterate tend to go with the most dogmatic elements of organized religion.
The great religions are anchored in the ancient past, a pre-science era. They predate the scientific era by millennia. In the formational centuries they found religious explanations for scientific observations that otherwise confounded them. As the scientific method began introducing demonstrable explanations for things long covered by religious doctrine the clash was inevitable. That it continues today, however, is depressing.
I find it odd that the western world hasn't generated any spiritual traditions of it's own other than money and bombing.
Post a Comment