Scientific Illiteracy
Posted on June 17, 2006 Comments (5)
Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology by Liza Gross, Public Library of Science:
While the 17% figure does not amaze me I am surprised that the scientific literacy has doubled since 1979.
A comparison of science education achievement: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (TIMSS), Average science scale scores of eighth-grade students, by country (2003), top 13 shown below:
| Country | Average score |
|---|---|
| Singapore | 578 |
| Taiwan | 571 | South Korea | 558 |
| Hong Kong | 556 |
| Estonia | 552 |
| Japan | 552 |
| Hungary | 543 |
| Netherlands | 536 |
| USA | 527 |
| Australia | 527 |
| Sweden | 524 |
| Slovenia | 520 |
| New Zealand | 520 |
| International Average | 473 |
Good news.
I disagree that the era of nonpartisan science is gone. Extremist often gain an inordinate amount of media and political attention. But overall most people realise science is the driving force behind economic gains that they want to see continue. The challenge is making sure the fairly boring task of investing in basic research, basic science education encouraging engineering innovation, etc. don’t get overlooked as spicier topics get attention.
There really isn’t much question scientific and engineering breakthroughs will continue to provide huge economic benefit to humanity; the question is where those advances will be made. I believe the USA will continue to be home to many of those innovations however that global share will decrease as others, especially Asia, are responsible for an increasing share. I believe, increasing scientific literacy of the country (for the USA or any others) will lead to that country increasing their share of global scientific and engineering advances and gain that country economic benefits.
- USA Slipping on Science
- Shortage of Engineers?
- Science Education in the 21st Century
- The Economic Benefits of Math
- Companies Not Countries
5 Responses to “Scientific Illiteracy”
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July 19th, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
[…] Some things are not that complicated. If you choose not to put in the work to study and learn you are less likely to be equally prepared. The USA can make excuses for poor performance compared to other countries or can decide that we don’t really want to try and be as successful (say aim for about 40th place among counties for level of primary science education). It seems to me the more honest assessment right now is we don’t want to put in the effort that other countries do. That is a choice that seems to have been made, and while I think it is a mistake, that doesn’t mean the USA can’t still make it – I know that might surprise you that an option I disagree with might be chosen […]
February 23rd, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
“Singaporean officials had a bold proposition for their Indonesian counterparts at a top-level meeting on March 18th: why not let us “manage” one of your islands?”
March 19th, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences: only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun; only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time…
April 10th, 2010 @ 8:44 am
[…] USA continues to lag far behind the rest of the world in this basic science understanding. Similar to how we lag in other science and mathematical education. Nearly Half of Adults in the […]
May 4th, 2015 @ 11:32 am
“So for the Smart Nation Programme Office, I have put Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in charge, reporting to me. Vivian is both a hacker and a dabbler – He used to be an eye surgeon but since he does not get to operate on eyes nowadays, he dabbles in building simple robots, assembling watches, wireless devices and programming apps. His day job is to be the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and so when he builds apps, he uses the real time APIs generated by the Ministry…”