1 in 4 Americans Believe the Sun Revolves Around the Earth

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No... its exactly like saying that the United States has significant issues with poverty.... Did you even read my post? The last line is something I agree with completely but I am not sure why you are presenting it as a statement I would be in opposition to or dismissive of, when the last sentence of my post specifically says that I find the range of outcomes outrageous.

The US has a fantastic education system, at the top end (which is why I went to graduate school in the US and my friends who went to good prep schools were just better equipped than I was, coming from an Australian public school). At the bottom end, things are terrible, it is a consistent issue across many areas of the US and something people who live in place like my home country don't necessarily understand.

91, maybe you didn't mean it that way, but you put your foot in your mouth with this one. Your statement was '14th isn't all that bad because the low number is caused by poor students being miseducated, the rich kids are doing really well.' You softened it with the statement about the spread, but that doesn't mean that your initial statement was pretty heinous.

Our school system is failing half of its students, and that's not ok regardless of what the other half is doing.

Bugger off. I am responsible for what I say, not for how someone might want to twist it. Go find some other straw man to attack.

Vexcalibur took it the same way, 91. I'm not twisting it; I accept that's not what you meant, but you misspoke.

If IQ has a Guassian Distribution than half of the test scores are below 100. What we really need is the standard deviation of the distribution.

ruveyn

Glad to know it's not just me!

What, was Thomas81 booked? Vex did not even quote the full passage, just the one sentence, removed from context. I did not misspeak, I wrote earnestly and in good faith and condemned the reality that I was citing in the very next sentence.

As proud American... I'm going to hide my head in a hole in the ground in shame.

I was being sarcastic.
I cant tell whether you realize that or not.

My point was that he was saying (when you get to the ghist of it) is that 'half of all Americans are below average' which is a tautalogy (like saying that 'most bachelor's are single').

But if your siblings all have IQs in the '65 range' that would mean that when they were ten years old they all had the mentality of three year olds, and couldnt read nor write, and probably couldnt dress themselves. Are your siblings all THAT far gone?

I'm curious how they'd get this information, seeing how there are millions of Ameicans, it be very hard to survey everyone. They might had used not a particularly bright group. I believe that this is false.

This really isn't all that surprising, given America's history. Since the very beginning, American society has had a strong anti-intellectual streak. I am not sure this is uniform (the circles in America I run in reward intelligence), but it's there. I can't say whether it caused our public schools to start failing, or if it was the other way around. In any case, I doubt that improving public schools would remove the strong ant-intellectual bias from our society.

On the flip side, our nation consistently attracts the brightest and most talented people.

Hmm... not sure about this. The US seemed to be far more welcoming of me and my desire to achieve than my home country. Australia has a real issue with Tall Poppy Syndrome where the smart are cut down. In America I was generally encouraged to go as far as I could.

I recall how not many years ago, when Sarah Palin - hardly an intellectual giant - was running for the veep position, it was suddenly popular to ridicule intellectuals and "elitists." Suddenly, it was a point of pride not to know anything, and the idea that "knowing too much is a bad thing" became popular.

and when Michelle Obama started promoting fitness and healthy eating, suddenly it became a point of pride on the right to be overweight and unhealthy - not even kidding, unfortunately.

1/4th of Americans are stupid and ignorant to the point they rather cling to rifles and bibles as well as conspiracy theories than read a science book or understand logic or reasoning! Most of them still think california will just lop off and sink into the ocean!

they certainly say that they hope it will, anyway