Yet, within these advancements that shape our future, there exists a deeply troubling paradox. Generation X and the generations that follow may be the most technologically proficient in history, but also the most scientifically illiterate. Recently, in a comprehensive international study of American twelfth-graders, our best students in math and physics ranked only average when compared with students worldwide. In the global marketplace, the U.S. ranked behind less-developed countries like Greece, Slovenia and Latvia. The age of advancing science arrives in tandem with an information revolution.
Society is offered an explosion of data, news, and knowledge.
But with no basis in how to think critically about this information, Generation X will exist minus the tools to sort the reliable information from the misinformation. In a democratic republic, a generation of Americans unable to distinguish the valid from the uncertain weakens the foundations of self-governance. Joining with scientific illiteracy is a growing blight of belief in superstition and pseudoscience. A 1996 Gallup Poll revealed that a third of Americans believe in ghosts, a quarter believe in the tenets of astrology, and a third believe that an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. In addition, there exists an increasing public infatuation with alternative medical therapies.