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

House on Fire
There, in this burning house, they play, sport, and amuse
themselves with all sorts of games. They do not know that
this dwelling is afire, they do not understand it, do not
perceive it, pay no attention to it, and so they feel no
agitation. Though threatened by this great [fire], though in
such close contact with so much ill, they pay no attention to
their danger, and make no efforts to get out." '
from The Saddharmapundarika,
in Buddhist Scriptures, Edward Conze, ed.
(Penguin Books, 1959)
One of the reasons it's so interesting to write for Parade
magazine is feedback. With eighty million readers you can
really sample the opinion of the citizens of the United States. You
can understand how people think, what their anxieties and hopes
are, and even perhaps where we have lost our way.
An abbreviated version of the preceding chapter, emphasizing
the performance of students and teachers, was published in
Parade. I was flooded with mail. Some people denied there was a
problem; others said that Americans were losing cutting-edge
intelligence and know-how. Some thought there were easy solutions;
others, that the problems were too deeply ingrained to fix.
Many opinions were a surprise to me.
A tenth-grade teacher in Minnesota handed out copies of the
article and asked his students to tell me what they thought. Here's
what some American high school students wrote (spelling, grammar
and punctuation as in the original letters):
• Not a Americans are stupid We just rank lower in school big deal.
• Maybe that's good that we are not as smart as the other
countries. So then we can just import all of our products and
then we don't have to spend all of our money on the parts for
the goods.
• And if other countries are doing better, what does it matter,
their most likely going to come over the U.S. anyway?
• Our society is doing just fine with what discoveries we are
making. It's going slowly, but the cure for cancer is coming
right along.
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