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

House on Fire
• Around 33 hours for fifth graders! In my opinion thats too
much that's almost as many hours as a full job practically. So
instead of homework we can be making money.
• When you put down how far behind we are in science and
math, why don't you try tell us this in a little nicer manner? . . .
Have a little pride in your country and its capabilities.
• I think your facts were inconclusive and the evidence very
flimsy. All in all, you raised a good point.
All in all, these students don't think there's much of a problem;
and if there is, not much can be done about it. Many also
complained that the lectures, classroom discussions and homework
were 'boring'. Especially for an MTV generation beset by
attention deficit disorders in various degrees of severity, it is
boring. But spending three or four grades practising once again
the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions
would bore anyone, and the tragedy is that, say, elementary
probability theory is within reach of these students. Likewise for
the forms of plants and animals presented without evolution;
history presented as wars, dates and kings without the role of
obedience to authority, greed, incompetence and ignorance;
English without new words entering the language and old words
disappearing; and chemistry without where the elements come
from. The means of awakening these students are at hand and
ignored. Since most school children emerge with only a tiny
fraction of what they've been taught permanently engraved in
their long-term memories, isn't it essential to infect them with
consumer-tested topics that aren't boring . . . and a zest for
learning?
Most adults who wrote thought there's a substantial problem. I
received letters from parents about inquisitive children willing to
work hard, passionate about science but with no adequate community
or school resources to satisfy their interests. Other letters
told of parents who knew nothing about science sacrificing their
own comfort so their children could have science books, microscopes,
telescopes, computers or chemistry sets; of parents teaching
their children that hard work will get them out of poverty; of a
grandmother bringing tea to a student up late at night still doing
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