Problems with learning & Rant Responses

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So the other day Meta watched a movie called "A Private Universe." We also watched some other video, but I forget what that one was named. Anyhow, the movies were all about how traditional teaching methods fail. The movie was the result of an NSF study and was really quite striking. For example, they asked 23 Harvard students, alumni, and professors "What causes the seasons?"

Two of them got it right. Two. That's so sad. Most people cited the elliptical orbit of the earth and claimed that winter was when the earth was farther from the sun. I'd bet anything that every single one of these people knew that the southern hemisphere has summer when we have winter, but they never caught that fallacy. The most interesting part was their theory on how these people arrived at this misconception: The people doing the study proposed that the way textbooks diagram the seasons is what causes the misconception. In order to show the tilt of the earth, textbooks regularly show the diagram from an angle. This perspective drawing makes the orbit of the earth seem very elliptical when in fact it's just barely shy of being circular.

There were other examples including questions about what causes the phases of the moon and whether or not sight depended on the presence of light. My other favorite one was one about lighting a bulb using a battery and a wire. The interesting part was where all of the people were sure they could do it. And then they couldn't. Teehee.

A quote from a friend: "Think about the median person in America. Now think about how 50% of the people are dumber than that."

So I got a few responses to my little rant. Just to emphasize apathy at Olin, I got to see all of 16 people go to my class election assembly. Sad. Truly sad. Only about a third of our school votes in the Honor Board. Oh so sad. What do we really expect out of a representative government like our nation purports to have when we don't even vote in a situation where our vote does matter. It matters very visibly. btw - about half of voting-age Americans vote in presidential elections. That's not that much, but at least it's more than our tight-knit community can muster.

Not to worry. I still love Olin. I understand people are really really busy. In fact I accounted for 16 people at class elections and about half of that again had good excuses. And I wasn't really asking around or anything. Yay busyness, yay overload, yay Olin! (yay burnout??)