making fun of oklahoma high schoolers

[walkitout]

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279410

This is slightly better coverage than some of the other articles, in that they actually supply the questions. What they _do not_ mention is that Strategic Vision is a Republican polling organization.

I'm not entirely certain what they're up to with this, but given that conservatives paid a conservative polling organization to get this outcome, I, for one, would be asking what's up. Like, did they repeat this on many small groups of Oklahoma high school students until they got the result they were looking for?

It bothers me that MSNBC political talk shows repeat this as kind of a "lighter side" story without mentioning who did the study, either who paid for it or who did the work. It feeds into a Conservative Southerners Are Stupid narrative, and it feels a little too much like we're being led right down a garden path. And often, that doesn't end well.

Comments

Re: Still haven't found the TV follow-up in Arizona, but

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

And see balachthon's analysis at http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9l9q2/75_of_oklahoma_high_school_students_cant_name_the/

"Keep in mind it's an open-answer format (not multiple choice). Nevertheless, for every single question, the results listed add up to 100% exactly--with no "Other" category listed as a catch-all for rarer responses. Most of the questions have only 3-6 different responses listed (besides "Don't Know"). This is strange in and of itself, and becomes more troubling when you look at some of the particular questions and sets of responses ..."

Re: Still haven't found the TV follow-up in Arizona, but

[walkitout]

Nice analysis!

When I was in fifth grade (and believe me, to this day I will almost always do my best to give an accurate response to any question posed by anyone for any reason -- I'm that kind of person), I was so disgusted with my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Siscel, that I cooked up a little something-something for our unit on Columbus' discovery of America. We knew he'd ask something abysmally stupid: how did Columbus get to America? So we decided we'd all insist that he swam, and refuse to budge on that position no matter what he said.

That guy was such a bonehead he honestly thought that growing carrots in outer space (well, in space stations, hydroponically) would be a great idea because the vitamins in the carrots wouldn't be drawn down by gravity to the lower parts of the carrot. Whether or not that's even valid (pretty sure not, but hey, you never know), he further believed that would mean the carrots would have _more_ vitamins.

Yep. Totally worth telling him that Columbus swam and sticking to my guns on it. Because he was dumb enough to not even explore the idea that this was a conspiracy -- at least for the first five or so minutes.

Obviously he had it backward

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

If gravity drew the vitamins down to the bottom of the carrot, more would push in from the top, thus increasing vitamin density throughout. I mean, duh! /BS off