What the hell is with people's disbelief of science in this country

[SheilaT]

56. One problem is that it is not uncommon

for the high school biology teacher to be the football coach. Which means that the guy does not know a lot about biology or how to teach it.

And many kids get through high school without taking much math or science. Every so often a discussion will spring up here about how much math is needed, and lots of DUers will (proudly it seems to me) proclaim that they had to take Algebra I three times just to pass and they have never ever had to use that knowledge in their life since.

The point of studying things like math and science is to understand certain ways of thinking, of logical connections, of what's necessary to prove something true. Or false as the case may be. Just as history and geography give us a sense of our world, what's happened in the past, how landforms, climate, weather, lakes, deserts, and so on affect modern life. History is to help us understand what happened and (if we're lucky) why it happened. Literature is again a way of connecting to the past and to the culture at large. It's also useful to be able to understand what's being said.

But most kids while they're in high school don't get it that any of these things might matter. If they have crappy teachers, or attend a poor school, or have parents who likewise don't think education is very important, they do what they must to graduate and promptly forget as much as they can as quickly as possible.

The lack of critical thinking skills is all too common and very scary.