He is not the basis of my posting. Alas,Sculptor1 wrote: ↑March 26th, 2021, 3:47 pmI would hesitate from overlarge conclusions based on the prejudices of one man.LuckyR wrote: ↑March 26th, 2021, 12:41 pmThe causes are quite numerous, you have mentioned several. Others include the reality that understanding concepts is inherently more difficult than regurgitating factoids, that formal Education has traditionally been politically led by the Humanities and that successful scientists can find well compensated employment in industry whereas the pinnacle of employment outside of the sciences is often in higher education itself. Lastly and likely most importantly, grade school educators are less likely to be personally science literate and thus shy away from teaching subject matter in which they themselves are not conversant.Steve3007 wrote: ↑March 26th, 2021, 6:03 amIt seems to me that it's generally regarded as more socially acceptable to be both scientifically and mathematically illiterate than it is to be ignorant in other subject. I think there are various reasons for this, but one (at least where I live) is that the people whose voices are heard (journalists and politicians) are often proudly scientifically and mathematically lliterate.LuckyR wrote:I am not commenting on the uses nor the importance of various subjects, just that science literacy is less common than competence in other disciplines.
There's a UK TV quiz show called University Challenge hosted by a journalist called Jeremy Paxman. He's never been shy to show his opinions and over the years of watching I've noted that there tends to be a difference in the way that he reacts when contestants get a question about, say, history wrong versus getting a question about mathematics or physics right. In the former case he mocks them for their ignorance and in the second case he mocks them for their geekiness.
general trends predict nothing for individual situations and only have value when groups are analyzed.