Why are all the questions in Astronomy & space so infantile, don't they teach anything in schools anymore?

Answer 1

Yes, indeed; they don't. The dumbing down of American education began about 25 years ago, under the Reagan administration. Conservative leaders prefer a dumb populace because they are easier to fool.

When I was in grade school we had a session on science every day. My slowest classmates could name all the planets in order in the 5th grade, and explain the phases of the moon by the 7th grade.

We studied the rudaments of chemistry, physical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, natural biology, and astronomy. I remember embarrassing my teacher in the sixth grade with a series of questions about the nature of energy and waves that he could not answer.

In the seventh grade I built a simple mechanical orrery as a science fair project. We demonstrated it in class and used it to explain the phases of the moon and the mechanics of orbits. That was the year the Soviets placed Sputnik in orbit, and "orbit" was an important word.

All of that popular interest has been lost, and as a nation we are suffering from a lack of interest in almost all subjects of importance. But it is much easier to get people with no education confused about who has weapons of mass destruction.

So that is why it is so. If education in this country was restored to the quality that it was in the 1960s, we would all be winners, except the Republican incumbents.

By the way, I hate to bring this up, but the question above contains a fatal grammatical error. When I was in school, a "comma splice" on any school paper got you a Zero on that paper. So you learned fast. There are two sentences in that question, and the first should end with a question mark, whereas the second should begin with a capital letter. Alternatively, it would be acceptable to replace the comma with a semicolon

Sorry. That's they way it was in school not all that long ago.

Answer 2

Good question.

However, it is not the complex astronomy questions that are a problem. It is things like the kids not knowing what causes the phases of the moon, or like a recent question where the kid (I hope its a kid) wants to know why the moon is not visible all the time.

These are not necessarily the fault of the education system. I believe it is city living. If you live in the country with few lights around, you are in touch with the sky, and you know the moon tracks a bit across the sky from night to night, and that it is often visible in daylight.

Also, these people only occasionally glance in the sky, and when they see something they don't understand, it is UFO. They forget (or just don't think) that there are millions of professional and amateur observers watching the sky from dark places every night, who have never seen anything they do not understand. yet, these city people cry UFO based on a few glances in the night sky per year.

Recently we had millions (yes millions) of people worldwide convinced they were going to see Mars as big as the moon. The main fault for the spread of that was the internet, but the worrying thing was that if they had just an inkling of knowledge about the Solar System they would have known that this notion was preposterous.

The same kids, with no space knowledge at all apart from Star Trek episodes, spout garbage all over the internet about the moon landings being a hoax. If they gave it the slightest thought, or spent an hour reading the incredible story of Apollo, they would realise instantly how ridiculous is the notion that 400,000 people involved in the space program could have been fooled by a "hollywood".

It may seem a small point to most, but in reality, ignorance, blind belief and propaganda together form the base cause of all the woes in this world.

That's why I get my back up sometimes with the inane questions on this forum.

Answer 3

Most high schools (in the US) don't offer astronomy classes at all, and those that do don't require everyone to take astronomy. Also, I read very recently that in elementary school, kids spend only 3% of their time learning science. That's any science, not just astronomy!

The state of science education in America is pretty dismal. It's pretty sad, especially since two of the most popular topics for little kids are dinosaurs and space, but by the time they are in middle school most kids hate/are too good for science.

I teach college astronomy, and I can tell you that there are a lot of very prevalent astronomy misconceptions among american adults - moon phases, seasons, gravity, these are all mysteries to most people.

Answer 4

Meh. I don't remember learning anything about astronomy in school - which is why I went to grad school for it. That, and it's cool.

I meet adults regularly who don't know the first thing about the universe - gravity on the Moon, the Big Bang, etc.

I gave my (university!) students a quiz today asking them to name the first 4 planets out from the Sun. Less than half of them got it right. After 2 months of astronomy classes. I'm not blaming myself for this one, seeing how often we've gone over it.

Answer 5

Well, there are a couple possibilities:

1) The questions are asked by young people, maybe ranging in age around 12-18?
2) They're too lazy to look things up at wikipedia.com or google.com

Answer 6

Schools are designed so that students with lower intelligence can keep up.(no child left behind) I personally think we could push the students until they fail then see where they should be according to abilities. The ones who are not capable of higher learning should go to a trade school.

Answer 7

There isn't enough Astronomy in the school ciriculum, I agree. But there is a lot of biology and stuff, so it's a pretty crowded ciriculum.

Answer 8

Perhaps teaching kids about the Moon and Earth revolving around the Sun would go against the beliefs of George W.

Answer 9

What makes you think that these questions aren't asked by curious infants?

Answer 10

I know. You would think kids would get into science since their idols, like Jessica Simpson, are such space cadets.