{"id":1524,"date":"2005-03-04T01:38:18","date_gmt":"2005-03-04T06:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2005\/03\/american_iq\/"},"modified":"2005-03-04T01:38:18","modified_gmt":"2005-03-04T06:38:18","slug":"american_iq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/03\/american_iq\/","title":{"rendered":"American IQ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you ever suspect there are a lot of &#8220;dumb&#8221; Americans around, perhaps it&#8217;s because <a title=\"'We're No. 1'? Not Even Close.\" href=\"http:\/\/baltimorechronicle.com\/020205MichaelVentura.shtml\">there are<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p># The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (<i>The New York Times<\/i>, Dec. 12, 2004).<br \/>\n# The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (<i>NYT<\/i>, Dec. 12, 2004).<br \/>\n# One-third of our science teachers and one-half of our math teachers did not major in those subjects. (Quoted on &#8220;The West Wing,&#8221; but you can trust it &#8212; their researchers are legendary.)<br \/>\n# Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (<i>The Week<\/i>, Jan. 7, 2005).<br \/>\n# &#8220;The International Adult Literacy Survey &#8230; found that Americans with less than nine years of education &#8216;score worse than virtually all of the other countries'&#8221; (Jeremy Rifkin&#8217;s superbly documented book <i>The European Dream: How Europe&#8217;s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream<\/i>, p.78).<br \/>\n# Our workers are so ignorant, and lack so many basic skills, that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (<i>NYT<\/i>, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth?  Suddenly some of the opinion poll findings I see make more sense.<br \/>\nRead the whole piece to see why America may not  &#8220;Number 1&#8221; anymore:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No. 1? In most important categories we&#8217;re not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.<br \/>\nThe USA is &#8220;No. 1&#8221; in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2005\/03\/american_iq\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to American IQ\"><p>If you ever suspect there are a lot of &#8220;dumb&#8221; Americans around, perhaps it&#8217;s because there are: # The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004). # The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). # One-third of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}