Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

No Such Thing as a Dumb Question
when you grow up, you'll be the first person to find out.'
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions,
questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every
question is a cry to understand the world.* There is no such thing
as a dumb question.
Bright, curious children are a national and world resource.
They need to be cared for, cherished, and encouraged. But mere
encouragement isn't enough. We must also give them the essential
tools to think with.
'It's Official', reads one newspaper headline: 'We Stink in Science'.
In tests of average 17-year-olds in many world regions, the
US ranked dead last in algebra. On identical tests, the US kids
averaged 43% and their Japanese counterparts 78%. In my book,
78% is pretty good - it corresponds to a C+, or maybe even a B-;
43% is an F. In a chemistry test, students in only two of 13 nations
did worse than the US. Britain, Singapore and Hong Kong were
so high they were almost off-scale, and 25% of Canadian 18-yearolds
knew just as much chemistry as a select 1% of American high
school seniors (in their second chemistry course, and most of them
in 'advanced' placement programmes). The best of 20 fifth-grade
classrooms in Minneapolis was outpaced by every one of 20
classrooms in Sendai, Japan, and 19 out of 20 in Taipei, Taiwan.
South Korean students were far ahead of American students in all
aspects of mathematics and science, and 13-year-olds in British
Columbia (in western Canada) outpaced their US counterparts
across the board (in some areas they did better than the Koreans).
Of the US kids, 22% say they dislike school; only 8% of the
Koreans do. Yet two-thirds of the Americans, but only a quarter
of the Koreans, say they are 'good at mathematics'.
Such dismal trends for average students in the United States are
occasionally offset by the performance of outstanding students. In
1994, American students at the International Mathematical Olympiad
in Hong Kong achieved an unprecedented perfect score,
defeating 360 other students from 68 nations in algebra, geometry
* I'm excluding the fusillade of 'whys' that two-year-olds sometimes pelt their
parents with - perhaps in an effort to control adult behaviour.
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