Japanese students are stupid

[Sputty]

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Kids in Land of the Rising Sun in the dark over astronomy

Tue Sep 21, 4:58 AM ET Add Offbeat - AFP to My Yahoo!



TOKYO (AFP) - They may come from the Land of the Rising Sun, but many Japanese children do not know the solar body sets in the west and also think it circles the Earth, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan said.


AFP/File Photo



But their ignorance of basic astronomy is not because they are poor students -- just the opposite, they have learned badly thought-out lessons by rote, Hidehiko Agata, an assistant professor at the observatory told AFP Tuesday.


A team led by Agata questioned a total of 1,692 students aged nine to 13 in three different surveys from June 2001 to June 2004.


In one survey of 720 pupils, 27 percent did not know that the Sun sets in the west, while two percent explained the Moon's waxing and waning by choosing the explanation "the Moon has many shapes".


In another sample, out of 348 students asked to circle the correct statement to describe the Earth's orbital relationship to the Sun, 42 percent circled "the Sun goes around the Earth", while 56 percent picked the correct answer.


Only 39 percent correctly answered that the Moon orbits the Earth in the same way as man-made satellites.


Agata said that under the Japanese elementary school curriculum introduced in 2002, teachers only explain the movement of the Sun, the Moon and the stars as viewed from the perspective of the ground.


"This is a case of students answering as they are taught rather than them just making a mistake," he said.


Agata also noted students in rural areas with more experience of outdoors more often answered correctly than children from Japan's brightly-lit cities where the night sky is only dimly visible.


"Students' experience with nature has become very limited so I think that is a big reason for this result," he said.


Agata presented his surveys Tuesday to a meeting of the the Astronomical Society of Japan.