{"id":6810,"date":"2006-03-09T10:36:24","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T15:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6810"},"modified":"2006-03-09T10:36:24","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T15:36:24","slug":"we-still-have-a-long-way-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/we-still-have-a-long-way-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"We still have a long way to go"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the few parts of the president’s recent State of the Union address<\/a> that I liked was his emphasis on the importance of science education.<\/p>\n

“[T]o keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people — and we’re going to keep that edge. Tonight I announce an American Competitiveness Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give our nation’s children a firm grounding in math and science.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putting aside the irony of President “Global Warming is a Myth” praising the role of science, and ignoring for a moment the merit of Bush’s competitiveness initiative, I think the sentiment<\/i> is exactly right. The United States will suffer in the long run if Americans fall behind international competitors in the sciences.<\/p>\n

It’s exactly why results like these<\/a> aren’t just embarrassing, they’re almost dangerous.<\/p>\n

A Gallup report released today reveals that more than half of all Americans, rejecting evolution theory and scientific evidence, agree with the statement, “God created man exactly how Bible describes it.”<\/p>\n

Another 31% says that man did evolve, but “God guided.” Only 12% back evolution and say “God had no part.”<\/p>\n

Gallup summarized it this way: “Surveys repeatedly show that a substantial portion of Americans do not believe that the theory of evolution best explains where life came from.” They are “not so quick to agree with the preponderance of scientific evidence.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was a bit of a partisan edge, but not much. Gallup found that 57% of Republicans believe “God created human beings in present form,” while 44% of Dems believe it.<\/p>\n

Politics aside, I can’t help but wonder about how this might ultimately affect the country. The president’s speech was largely right about this — technological and economic innovation is dependent on Americans getting a firm grounding in science. Based on the Gallup poll, and others like it, this isn’t happening.<\/p>\n

Rumor has it, for example, that the U.S. wants to compete in fields like biotech in the coming decades. If most Americans reject even basic lessons of modern biology, who’s going to make the scientific strides? At what point will Americans’ scientific misunderstandings actually undermine our national progress?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the few parts of the president’s recent State of the Union address that I liked was his emphasis on the importance of science education. “[T]o keep America competitive, one commitment is necessary above all: We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}