Last night, we rolled in the new course (Arts Science Integrated Course - ASIC 200) and it was a lot of fun (a little odd for me doing what was essentially a history speel, but there you have it). Anyway, one of the first things I got to do was play a little game with the class. It's actually something I do quite often when working with the general public and trying to hone in on the disparity of brain "airtime" devoted to what are essentially trivial things, versus things that really you'd hope everyone was comfortable or literate in.
Breakdown of the talk kind of went like this:
[1] Which one of these is false, bearing in mind that they all sound a little ludicrous? It was around here that we asked the students to introduce themselves to one or more of their neighbours and discuss what they feel was the false option (I also learnt what a "think paired-share" activity was - ooh more jargon). Then a call for a show of hands, and going through the answers.
[2] First up though, I queried if they knew the identity of this bird (it's a European Starling). Curiously, we got only a handful of students who felt they knew the identity of the bird (and three of these I noticed were members of our teaching team who had not seen the slide before - this out of a class of 70 or so students present that evening). The point here I guess is that it provides a glimpse at our familiarity with our local ecology. The starling is one of the most common urban birds in Vancouver (right up there with the iconic crows and pigeons), and yet we had a less than 10% recognition value.
[3] This, of course, is in stark contrast to other things - Pokemon as an example. I've spoken about this before (and indeed, the Terry project is actually working with this a little bit - any of you graphic design types want to help?).
Anyway the Pokemon query was prompted by a letter published in Science in 2002, entitled "Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokemon." One of its conclusions from the study reported that:
Our findings carry two messages for conservationists. First, young children clearly have tremendous capacity for learning about creatures (whether natural or man-made), being able to at age 8 to identify nearly 80% of a sample drawn from 150 synthetic "species." Second, it appears that conservationists are doing less well than the creators of Pokemon at inspiring interest in their subjects: During their primary school years, children apparently learn far more about Pokemon than about their native wildlife and enter secondary school being able to name less than 50% of common wildlife types.
[4] But Pokemon is only the start. A couple years back we had David Orr come out to UBC to give a talk (he was awesome and the talk is available on this site). He said:
"We can recognize a thousand, two thousand corporate logos, it is said, but typically fewer than 10 plants and animals native to our region..."
[5/6/7] Doing a little morphing... Why can't there be the same level of recognition of things like the "hockey stick" graph, that correlates CO2 emissions vs global temperature measurements?
[8] Next up, and the other option that was true, was the bit about Americans considering themselves literate in "avian development and phylogeny" (I switched avian to the latin name for the Starling).
[9] This strange statement is essentially good to go because it plays into the whole "Evolution vs Intelligent Design/Creationism" thing. As a scientist, the stats from these types of polls (and these are major national gallup polls) is just crazy to me. I actually just found out that the NCSE redid their poll last year - the number has jumped to 48%)
[10] Anyway, this suggests that the avian statement is true, because if folks truly believe in statement 3, then chances are, they are following the breakdown of "evolutionary" events as defined by Genesis. Basically, avian stuff just sort of happened on day 5. Oh yeah, and before us Canadians can get smug on the shocking results generated by our neighbours down south, we didn't fair too impressively ourselves last year.
[11...end] So.... (drum roll please). The false one was the one about "Paris Hilton" having more hits than "Climate." (Thank goodness). It'll be interesting to see whether "Britney Spears" can beat it - she seems to be in the news a lot these days. Of course, the one thing she needs more of is publicity - right?
Starling Image - Christopher Gunn [link]
Pokemon image [link]
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Have you muddled your words in 11? When you wrote "less" meaning "fewer" (hits is countable, tsk!), did you mean "more"?
Your whole argument sounds like b******ks to me though. Remembering names and appearances is not the same as understanding processes and principles. I can watch a game of football and follow it without knowing the players' names. I've got a biology degree and I find birdwatching intensely dull after about 10 minutes.
Your argument is parallel to the old distinction between "general knowledge" and "trivia". General knowledge is what I know, trivia is what I don't know.
I don't know why you find these results amazing. Why would people google "climate"? It's shoved down their throats in the news media. Whereas wanting to know the latest goss on Paris Hilton is more plausible, and it's about people! I don't follow celeb doings but I'm pretty sure I googled Paris Hilton to find what was happening when she got chucked into chokey and there were petitions around because it was so funny. On the other hand, I certainly have never googled climate. As for biodiversity research and Pokemon, well, there are always showboating academics wanting to come up with something glossy.
Actually, I would find it amazing if more than about 10% of Americans had a knowledge of avian phylogeny beyond "they're in families like hawks and crows and humming birds and little brown birds and I think someone said they're related to dinosaurs" or development beyond "they lay eggs and the chicks grow up in nests fed by their parents and then they fly away".
Maybe you need a couple of minutes in the Total Perspective Vortex!
Thanks for catching the typo. I'll change that right away.
You've got some pretty strong feelings for this game, but I think I still show something interesting - not sure I'm making an argument per se, but just highlighing a facet of our culture.
I do think, however, that this demonstrates something that isn't good for us. I'm not saying it's amazing (i.e. I'm not surprised by these things - I don't think anyone would be amazed by these observations, possibly disturbed or sadden by them, or even just apathetic to it).
Whether this relates to references on the web to certain things (BTW the act of "googling" something doesn't affect the net number of instances of the term on web); or being familiar to the biology around you (as oppose to say corporate symbols); or having gone to the effort of reading about the "hockey stick" graph, it only shows that a literacy disconnect does exist.
As you imply, finding out about Paris Hilton is more relevant to you, than finding out about the climate (whatever your opinion of either happens to be), and I guess that I'm just of the mind that that is a troubling thing indeed.
If I may chime in on the Paris Hilton issue: First, to clarify, as David has said, the number of google hits suggests how many references there are, how many results there are that mention a term. I.e., is there more news out there about Paris Hilton than on the climate. If this were true (and it's not implausible), I certainly do think it would be very upsetting.
I personally don't think there is a bigger crisis facing the world right now than climate change, and the worst part is lack of awareness. Oh, people have heard about it, but I mean being aware enough of the degree of the problem, and really looking into it and checking for themselves, and absorbing it to the depths of their soul such that they actually get it, that it actually sinks in how serious it is, and they recognize that this is for real, not an abstract sort of thing. The danger that people hear it as a kind of background buzz and think it doesn't apply to them is a serious one, and the fact that many will spend hours reading about a person like Hilton, who is completely insignificant in every way, is part of the problem.
As an aside, David, I actually just recently used one of the appendices from the curriculum documents in my biology class, and was somewhat amused at having come across your name. FYI I use the MB curriculum where I am, and it was on bioethics, true or false stories. E.g., a company bought access to all the species in some South American country for drug purposes, for 2 million, averaging a couple dollars per species, true or false?