Considering that more Americans believe in the devil than Darwin's theory of evolution, is it any surprise that a new study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development finds that Americans are below average in science competency.
Here's where our children of Dover stand among our competitors, and it isn't pretty:
Among OECD countries, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and Mexico have lower mean scores than the US; Sweden, Hungary, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Germany, Korea, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and Finland, as well as students in the combined area of the European Union, have higher mean scores than the US. Denmark, France, Iceland, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Norway and Luxembourg cannot be distinguished from US performance with statistical significance.
When your country's performance is on par with Spain - one of the last counties in western Europe to embrace modernity and turn its back on clerical rule - you have problems.
Another interesting finding is that the gap in science competency among American students closely tracks socio-economic inequality, with the wealthy more comfortable with science.
18% of the variation in student performance in the US is explained by students' background - this is significantly above the OECD average of 14.4%.
Poverty, education, and ignorance all wrapped together in a neat little package. I wonder which party should try and capitalize on this and tie it to maintaining America's technological edge and therefore our economic vitality. Here's a hint: it isn't the party of Huckabee or Romney.
