Friday, February 11, 2011

Third of Russians think sun spins round Earth?

It is headlines like these that allow education people to get on their “we must teach more science kicks. Why do people need to know this stuff? Will it help them live their lives better? Will ramming it into their heads harder make it stick? And would we be better off if it did stick?

Third of Russians think sun spins round Earth?

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Does the sun revolve around the Earth? One in every three Russians thinks so, a spokeswoman for state pollster VsTIOM said on Friday. In a survey released this week, 32 percent of Russians believed the Earth was the center of the Solar system; 55 percent that all radioactivity is man-made; and 29 percent that the first humans lived when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth."It's really quite amazing," spokeswoman Olga Kamenchuk said of the survey that polled 1,600 people across Russia's regions in January, with a 3.4-percent margin of error."All of them (the questions) were absolutely obvious... the data speaks of the low levels of education in the country." However, people tend to forget what they have been taught at school if it is not part of daily use, she added: "I wonder whether our colleagues in other countries would find any different."

The study also found that women were more likely than men to believe the scientific fallacies.

I note that the spokeswoman makes the same point, but in most places she would be ignored and a teach more science furor would ensue.