Massive ignorance

The recent survey done by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has alarmed educators in America.

The survey, the results of which were released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago last Feb. 14, showed that one out of every four Americans (25% of the population) thinks that the sun revolves around the earth.

The US National Public Radio (NPR) has tried to make Americans feel better by putting the situation in context. Americans are actually less ignorant than their counterparts in other developed areas in the world.

A 2005 survey in the European Union, recalls NPR, showed that 33% of Europeans do not know that the earth revolves around the sun.

The same NSF survey, by the way, revealed that one out of every two Americans thinks that antibiotics are effective against viruses. (Ask your doctor about that one.)

Environmentalists clamoring for action to mitigate climate change now know better what they are up against. If people do not even know that the earth revolves around the sun, how can they understand that the earth is dying?

There is no single reason for the massive ignorance displayed by Americans or Europeans (maybe Filipinos?) about our planet.

Perhaps it is education, since only 15% of Americans and only 35% of Europeans (in the EU) finish college. (Since only 14% of Filipinos finish college, there is no reason to think that we will fare better in a similar survey.)

Perhaps it is mass media. There are documentaries available on cable channels about science, but they have very little audience share compared to the entertainment networks that dumb down their viewers. (If you think our noontime shows are stupid, watch the noontime shows on American networks.)

Perhaps it is religion. After all, most (if not all) religions teach that the earth is a particularly important place, since God presumably pays attention to it. That the earth is just one insignificant planet revolving around one insignificant sun in a universe of billions of planets and suns is not a fact that inspires religious fervor.

Perhaps it is the sheer difficulty of survival in the modern world. It is hard enough earning money and finding food for oneself and one’s loved ones. Who really has time to worry about the earth revolving around the sun?

Whatever the reasons are for the lack of basic knowledge about where we are, however, may probably be removed through elementary education.

Here is a simple elementary school learning tool. Most elementary classrooms have a globe. Seeing only the globe makes children think that the earth is very big and that there is nothing else in the universe that compares to it. How about having a globe that has the sun attached to it? (Teachers can Google “solar system scale model.”) The sun would be much bigger than the earth. That would give children a visual representation of how small we are and how we revolve around the sun.

If a classroom has computer facilities, the teacher could show an animated diagram of the solar system, so the children realize that we do revolve around a bigger body, that we are not alone in our solar system, that our solar system is not alone in our galaxy, and so on.

In fact, even just by showing science fiction films, it should be possible to alert children to the reality that the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around.

Children have a vivid imagination. They can imagine worlds that are limitless. (The universe is not actually limitless, but it is very, very big.) If they are impressed, at such a young age, that we are just one little speck in a world created not only for our sake, then perhaps we would not be as self-centered as we are now.

CULTURAL CAREGIVING IN BOHOL: Hubert Gijzen, the Asia Pacific Regional Bureau Chief of UNESCO, Tobias Biancone, Director General of the UNESCO International Theatre Institute (ITI), and 25 Asian theatre practitioners will join Filipino artists in a healing mission to earthquake survivors in Bohol on Feb. 24-26.

The event is billed as “An Asia Pacific Forum and Cultural Caregiving Workshop.”

Through an intervention based on theater and the arts, the event aims to help victims of the earthquake in Bohol fully overcome their trauma. The event is part of the effort of UNESCO to support disaster risk reduction in the context of global climate change.

Endorsed by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, the Bohol event is organized by the Earthsavers Academy, a UNESCO Artist for Peace, led by Cecile Guidote Alvarez.

As ITI Philippines Secretary-General, I will facilitate the drafting of a Bohol Declaration and the creation of a teaching manual with video learning aids.

Bohol Governor Edgar Chatto will host the event, which highlights the Theater on Edge Festival, directed by Lutgardo Labad, retiring chair of the Drama Committee of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.