Fundies are Helping Make America Dumber

[GolightlyGrrl]

In other news, water is wet...

http://www.alternet.org/education/resul ... page=0%2C0

[DGayle]

A 2008 University of Texas study found that 25 percent of public school biology teachers believe that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously.

So the way to improve student knowledge isn't Common Core. It's to ditch the teachers who don't know the subject matter.

[FloraKitty35]

I read this article this morning. They mention Susan Jacoby's book, The Age of American Unreason. It is an outstanding book and worth reading.

[Mama Mia]

Off topic, but I was very glad to read in the fine print that they are finally addressing the cell phone/ land line issues in population sampling and presumably obtaining a more representative group.

[IceTwinkie]

Which begs the question; Are you stupid because you're a religious fundamentalist or, are you a religious fundamentalist because you're stupid?

I also want to say that that there is a vast difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance can be cured, stupidity is permanent.

[doggie]

well gullibility is a large part of it. but it is also choosing to ignore the world around you. it is required to be able to think everything in the bible is true the world is 6000 years old esc. You tell them there are trees that are older then 6000 years old and they will say the scientists are too stupid to count. Science proves the bible wrong accruing to them so the scientists have to be wrong.

[Coco]

well gullibility is a large part of it. but it is also choosing to ignore the world around you. it is required to be able to think everything in the bible is true the world is 6000 years old esc. You tell them there are trees that are older then 6000 years old and they will say the scientists are too stupid to count. Science proves the bible wrong accruing to them so the scientists have to be wrong.

They would also say that the trees were spoken into existence at a certain age already, or that star light was created in a path to the earth just at the same time that the star was created. Their faith is able to bend the puzzle pieces to fit.

[Becket70]

Uneducated and ignorant people are easier to control. That is one of my main beefs with the GOP (actually, there are too many to count). Instead of educating their constituents, they go along with their constituents' crazy ideas. It is not only their beliefs based on the Bible but the seemingly across-the-board acceptance of anti-science, anti-education, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-poor, etc. It's a dangerous path because one of these days this will not work on the political level and those left behind, the denialists, will have to change, accept or become totally isolated in their own world.

[Hane]

Uneducated and ignorant people are easier to control. That is one of my main beefs with the GOP (actually, there are too many to count). Instead of educating their constituents, they go along with their constituents' crazy ideas. It is not only their beliefs based on the Bible but the seemingly across-the-board acceptance of anti-science, anti-education, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-poor, etc. It's a dangerous path because one of these days this will not work on the political level and those left behind, the denialists, will have to change, accept or become totally isolated in their own world.

Decades ago, the Republican Party used to be considered the party of the elite, highly educated intelligentsia, and the Democratic Party that of the average Joe. It's astounding to see the 180 that's taken change during my own lifetime.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Which begs the question; Are you stupid because you're a religious fundamentalist or, are you a religious fundamentalist because you're stupid?

I also want to say that that there is a vast difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance can be cured, stupidity is permanent.

I was disappointed that the article only mentioned regional differences at the end.

To me, generalizations about "America" are meaningless. You have some really high level education and innovation - in Silicon Valley and parts of the north east. That's a world away from backwaters like Mississippi, where funding per student is astonishingly low and teachers still paddle kids. These areas have almost nothing in common.

I suspect that part of the appeal of fundamentalism in some regions is that it's seen as the religion of common folks, and that it makes lack of education into a virtue instead of a problem.

Of course, fundamentalism can also be the cause of ignorance. We are seeing Islamic fundamentalism destroying secular education, especially for girls, in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. It's not just a traditional lack of education - these are place that were formerly more educated, where the extremists are actively turning the clock back on education.

In some ultra-Orthodox circles of Judaism, there has also been a shift in recent years toward rejecting some science education. The maddening thing is that, like Islamic fundamentalism, this is a recent trend. We know that some of the biggest leaders in those communities had advanced secular educations. For example, the Lubavitcher Rebbe (head of the Chabad movement) went to university in Germany and Paris and studied engineering. His writings show some fairly sophisticated attempts to show that contradictions between the Bible and science aren't really contradictions at all, and they could be a jump-off point for some interesting discussion. What's happened, though, is that his enchantment with Germany and their high level of scientific learning came crashing down with the Holocaust, and he told his followers to concentrate on religious studies instead. So, now that he's gone, you have a new generation that sometimes shuns the very learning that made their late leader great. The science vs. the Bible arguments start to sound more absurd, because the people making the arguments don't actually understand them. If you want your head to hurt, ask a True Believer about the solar system. What started off as a philosophical, intellectual discussion by the leader about the theory of relativity turns into "it's true because holy books and people say it's true, and if you want to argue science, here's what our leader who was a Really Smart Guy had to say about it, even though we don't really understand the Big Scientific Words that he used".