After reading my posts on the startlingly low occurrence of heliocentrism in the U.S., several folks have asked me what the corresponding numbers are in Canada. I’ve done a bit of searching, and have so far unable to find a Canadian data set which directly addresses this question. My sense though, was that the spirit of the question does not demand a direct answer as such, but is rather intended to knock this admittedly smug Canada-dweller off his high horse (otherwise, they could have asked me about Italy, or the Sudan).
Accordingly, I searched for studies which featured direct comparisons of different types of literacy between countries. The best I’ve found so far is the “Findings from the Condition of Education 2006: U.S. Student and Adult Performance on International Assessments of Educational Achievement“, a roundup prepared by the U.S. Department of Education which summarizes results from a great number of international literacy comparisons. Anyone who’s interested in this topic should have a look at the document…it’s a great read.
The two studies quoted are the TIMSS and PISA. TIMSS is a great series of studies which were run in 1995, 1999 and 2003 which looked at cross-country scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, Canada did not participate in the 2003 run, so I won’t include the data here. TIMSS 2007 is currently underway, so we’ll have to wait until December 2008 to see what the results are. TIMSS 1999 featured a comparison of math and science literacy in 8th graders in which Canada scored 531 — “significantly higher” than the U.S. score of 515.
Table 9 in the FCE document shows the results of the science literacy data gathered as part of PISA 2003. Here Canada scores 519 — “measurably higher” than the U.S. score of 491. This data quantifies the scientific knowledge of 15 year olds.
The FCE’s Table 10 shows a very interesting summary of the results. Looking at Math and Science, it seems that the U.S. remains competitive through the 8th grade, and more or less collapses thereafter.
So the nutshell answer seems to be yes, Canadians know more about science than people in the U.S. We also have Universal health care and don’t start wars.