to the dumbing down of the Sheeple. Playing on the fears of the Fear-based, who'da thunk it?!?

And religion willingly whores itself out to those in power.

and being fear-based freezes sufferers in react mode, which perpetuates feelings of powerlessness and resentment.

of the united states.

Gems like the Gallup poll, the National Science Foundation etc. will become the rallying cry against funding schools. Since what we spend is garnering such low scores change is needed. That change will be to privatize schools.

Returning to fact based schools and fact based news is a start. The 'programing' that has led us to this point has nothing to do with schools. Some of the programing I speak of is the 30 or so religion based channels, 20 or so shopping channels, the half dozen 24 hour news channels, reality programing on The Learning Channel and History Channel.

Its this 'programing' that has led to the dumbing of America. TV, Americas babysitter.

With good reason, since they got rid of all the quality shows they used to produce. They go by TLC now.

As politicians reveal their knowledge of science in public statements, we should have a website that tracks this information. isyourleaderadumbass.com is available and would make a nice companion to factchecker.com.

Except she didn't see it as ignorance.

She thought her "common sense" trumped "book smart" every time.

it wouldn't be remarked upon when someone actually displays some.

For at least half of that time (probably longer), I have called it "uncommon sense," because not too many people seem to have any.

So it's 75% of public school biology teachers that were wrong, not 25%.

Which is like regarding dinosaur era mammals as humans.

Avian dinosaurs do co-exist with humans. Non-avian dinosaurs co-existed with mammals, but did not co-exist with humans.

That particular question, like most questions in life, did not have a simple, binary answer.

Birds have about as much in common with avian dinosaurs as dinosaur era 'primates' do with humans.

So no, 75% are not wrong. Avian dinosaurs co-existed with primate primates: yes. Humans and birds co-exist: yes. Humans and dinosaurs co-exist: no.

Birds don't "have about as much in common with avian dinosaurs as dinosaur era primates do with humans".

Birds *are* avian dinosaurs.


Here's some information on the subject:

"Birds are thus considered to be dinosaurs and dinosaurs are, therefore, not extinct. Birds are classified as belonging to the subgroup Maniraptora, which are coelurosaurs, which are theropods, which are saurischians, which are dinosaurs.[15]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

I'm not trying to be a know-it-all. But that particular question is a bad question, and some of those who "missed" it may actually know more than those who got it "right".

Last edited Sat Jun 7, 2014, 10:48 PM - Edit history (1)

But calling birds dinosaurs is like calling humans Eutherians.

On second thought, let's do. That means that dinosaurs and humans have lived together for the last 160 million years!

By definition.

All the science -- and I do mean ALL the science -- shows that some therapod dinos evolved into modern birds. This puts birds into the dinosaur clade, so they are properly termed avian dinosaurs. QED

Sorry.

I seriously doubt that 28% of tea party supporters really believe in both anthropomorphic global warming and evolution.

With something like 16-18 years of college under my belt as well as k-12, I think I only remember it being talked about in maybe 2-3 classes. Microbiology and pathophysiology, maybe. It might have been very briefly mentioned in high school a few decades back as well.

Because I'm not sure I could adequately describe the specific mechanisms through which radiation harms the human body.

Maybe more people do know it 'messes you up', without understanding how it specifically damages tissue or screws up DNA, and for the purposes of the survey, you had to know a little more than 'messes you up'.

And this a laywoman's understanding...

A. Low doses which we all get increase the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases through DNA mutations. However since cardiovascular diseases and cancer are the "big two" natural killers of humans and there is no way to know for certain if radiation caused them in a specific individual...

B. Extremely high whole body doses cause acute radiation sickness. This can mess up the central nervous system and cause a quick death OR if the dose is relatively low mostly just kills cells in the GI tract. This causes vomiting and diarrhea as well as radiation burns all of which leads to problems with dehydration and opportunistic infection.

C. Extremely high doses that are not whole body but rather one specific area can cause loss of hair, severe burns, loss of the body part affected, etc. This is how radiation therapy to treat cancer works. Blast the cancer cells with radiation and they die too. Obviously this only works on a local area. There have been accidents where the beam has been turned up too high though which can cause B.

D. Moderate-high doses (not acutely fatal) sustained over a long period of time. Ie handling very small quantities of radioactive material with no shielding or handling higher amounts with inadequate shielding. This causes blood cell and bone marrow problems. It is rare today because we know a lot more about radiation, but it happened to Marie Curie and some of the other radiation pioneers.

Surviving B, C, or D can cause A. In fact, if you survive B, C, or D you will likely get A.

People who work in areas with radiation are slightly more likely than the general population to get A. That's why when you get an Xray the lab tech walks out of the room. The dose you receive is so small it's an insignificant (probably 0) extra chance of causing A. But the lab tech who does it for 40 years is receiving the equivalent of many Xrays, even outside of the room.

25% of teachers believe that humans and dinos lived together?
Fuck, the stupid, it hurts.

the primary group is those that believe in polls!

Sarah Pallin, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, paul Ryan, John Boehner, Dinesh D'SouzaLouis Goemert, Lindsay Graham, Rand Paul, Scott Walker et al.

is an integral part of the right-wing program to turn America into a theocracy. For this program to work, young Americans are indoctrinated into the morass that is the mind of right-wing oligarchs and politicians. Think Blackstone and others preparing to take over the judicial system. Charter schools, religious schools, voucher programs for schools...all are paving the way for Americans to become even dumber. We expect the idiot fringe, i.e., tea party wackos, to believe whatever they are taught by the drivers of these programs. Even during my teaching years, we could easily see the destructive power of politicians controlling education...to the detriment of education. The process was painful to watch, and, yes, it began with Saint Ronald the Idiot. His reign of terror allowed those planning the destruction of American education to continue their process and accelerate their activities. My years in University in Texas gave me loads of insight into the mental processes of people who were stupid and proud of it.

by gays, by schools, by liberals, by feminists, by science, by atheists/agnostics, etc...

but it's just fear of kids being anti indoctrinated.

Thankfully despite the right wings attempt at this my generation is less religious than any previous one.

To go from dumb to dumber one needs two points.
-
A before and an after.
-
Only one point is given...the "after".

It's a sentence that if you swap the positions of the two of the nouns the statement becomes true. And if you're tired or not paying attention your brain might fill in and auto correct the sentence for you.

Not that I don't believe there aren't people who are wrong on it (mostly dittoheads) but I just find 20% too large to believe on that one, especially based on how the sentence/question would likely be worded.

is the inexorable degrading of the teaching profession, convincing the public that we are incompetent and not to be trusted, and setting us up at school to fear for our license and our career when a loud parent complains. Guess where most of the complaints come from? Guess who elected school board members, especially those elected by the christian right, listen to?

There are so many topics in classrooms that are avoided to prevent knee-jerk angry parental responses. We don't avoid them all, of course, but even when we address them, it can sometimes be in a furtive, guilty manner.

Here's an example: A few years back, I had a parent storm the office and the school board demanding my removal. Of course, I do have some protections which kicked in, so there were procedures to be followed to check out the complaint. And I had that parent sitting in my classroom observing and taking notes for a week, hoping to "catch" me in something inappropriate.

What terrible thing did I do? I read an ELA state standard about recognizing bias to the students, and told them it could be found in print, on tv, and on the radio. I said that as we were examining texts for bias, they could apply what they were learning to what they watched and heard on electronic sources. I gave no examples. I mentioned no tv or radio stations or personalities. But one student stood up in my classroom and yelled at me: "You're calling Glenn Beck a liar! And he's not!!! Everything he says is the truth!!!!"

The parent was in the office within 10 minutes of the dismissal bell.

Of course, I was not "removed." TPTB knew it was a ludicrous claim. But...when the admin thinks of me, when a school board member hears my name, what do they remember about me? I'm a "trouble maker." I didn't "compromise" to keep parents pacified by avoiding hot button topics.

It's not in the contract. It's not directly stated. But woe to the educator who pisses off parents by not watering down curriculum.

I've had administrators tell me that I couldn't teach a novel that was part of district adopted curriculum because it encouraged young people to question authority, and our community didn't want their children questioning anything. That same line was fed me when another administrator, a different year, observed me actually TEACHING (gasp!) students to ask critical questions about what they were learning.

When teachers get reprimanded, pressured, and have evaluations downgraded for things like this, is it any wonder that evolution isn't more openly, firmly, and clearly addressed?

This week, a former student who just graduated came back to visit my classes. He was president of the speech and debate team at his high school, and came to talk about that, and to demonstrate some of the different kinds of speaking that the team did in regional competitions. One of them was an impromptu speech: given a topic and 30 seconds to think, talk about it for five minutes. He did very well with each class, but he also shocked the hell out of them. Why? Because he talked about evolution, he talked about guns, he talked about all kinds of forbidden subjects for these rural tea-party raised kids. He could get away with it. He wasn't their teacher, he was a student, and he was demonstrating speaking skills, not teaching the topics he spoke about.

Still, my admin was not happy.

...Maher uses the phrase "willing suspension of critical thinking," when questioning Reed on the concept of 'faith.' Willing suspension of critical thinking applies here as well.

Willing suspension of disbelief is fine at the movies. Real life, not so much.

I find it incomprehensible how people can participate in such an easy practice so poorly. Maybe it stems from the idea that most any drive is going to take longer than it would to put 140 characters together in a Tweet, and that's the entire mental capacity of far too many people today.
#You'reanidiot #Hangupanddrive #Fuckingpayattention #Thisisapoundsign

The Arizonosaurus shows up every Sunday Morning on television.