Polaris is actually 4 stars really close together. The big one Polaris Aa (6-7 times the size of the sun), which provides most of the light, is less than 70 million years old.

Plato: 'One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

"We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite! We have to be selective who we allow to go through higher education." - Roger Freeman, education advisor to President Nixon, while working on election of Governor Ronald Reagan. Now we have Ivy League graduates running around telling the rubes that all they need to know they learned from the bible.

Some states are underfunding their students by several thousand dollars per head.

I'm pretty sure this works entirely in favour of the political and economical elite.

An American once told me that they are educated to be stupid.

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin

I dont know about this. There are thousands of documentaries out there and just ongoing TV in general. Plus radio talk shows, social debates and discourse. Plenty of ways to gain information and educate oneself. Yeah, you take in alot of c**p too, but academia and the written word are just as susceptible to garbage as everywhere else in life. The best education to start with is how to recognise the difference between opinion, ideas, theories and facts, followed closely by how to run a quantifiable investigation to get at a factual result. The rest just follows.

Smart way to get up votes. Bash everybody, while siding with everybody.

Well, since facebook posts are well below a 6th grade writing level, so this tracks. Explains why 51% of the country gets their "news" from facebook.

And this is why teachers are constantly pushing kids to read more. What a frightening statistic.

“Literally will not be able.” I see what you did there. Very clever!

The party refered to are the lib/tard sommie DEMS!!!!!

That would explain some of the yurunda I see being posted in some comment boards... Mind you, today's sixth grade is not the same one *I* went through - I was reading the newspaper from cover to cover in sixth grade.

What's ridiculous is that I remember some reading group wanted to have a goal of all Americans to be at that of a college level, which is totally asinine. Goals are supposed to be obtainable. That... isn't. Here's something a bit more reasonable "By 20xx, 60% of Americans will be able to read at a 7th grade level." It's more accurate to what we have now & more reasonable.

This explains to me how so many people can be completely unaware that the US economy is currently is in good shape, inflation and unemployment are down and wages are up. Right wing news sources just tell people it's bad and they believe it. I try to get my family members to look at government statistics and they refuse. I guess the can't understand the information.

I would say it explains a lot, but I think we all saw it coming.

IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW

It's 3rd grade now.

That's really sad. :( I got my first library card before I was in kindergarten, which I started at age 4. It feels like I've always been reading. I don't remember a time when I didn't.

I’m going to go cry now. Don’t mind me.

(6th grade is 11-12 years old)

In 2020 it was 54%.

Back in the 1980s, when I wrote industrial work instructions for chemical processing of printed circuit boards, our goal was to write for a 7th grade reading level. So have we deteriorated on grade level?

Is that the reason why there are only two political parties in the USA?

I started reading at 3 and by the time I started school at 5 I was reading at a 6th grade level and my books had to come from the junior school. In 2nd grade I was given different lessons to do by the teacher more suitable to my reading abilities while every other student was still on picture books. My teacher was off sick so we got a substitute who gave me the same book as the other kids to read. I explained that I was given other books to read by the teacher as my reading skills were now at 8th grade level and he just laughed at me and told me to sit down. I said no and he sent me to the headmistress who on seeing me said oh I forgot to tell him about you! I was allowed to stay in her office for the 2 days my teacher was off sick to continue my normal lessons. I'm not a genius because I sucked at math lol, still do. At 8 I read War and Peace in about 4 hours and did a comprehensive essay on it. I was a boring kid as all I wanted to do was read.

Public 'schools' with political and DEI agendas. Pronouns for the various sexes are now stressed more than geography. Buddy's son brings home recordings of the 'teaching' surreptitiously.

What is it we teach in American schools now instead of reading? Oh, yeah, CRT. It's easy to cram garbage down kid's throats when they can't actually read about things for themselves.

Long live the king.

Hippos are actually way more terrifying, too- they will actually chase and kill you for the heck of it; are built like tanks, and wander around on the land - at night. Where's the movie!!!??

I love this one.

The top of a nuclear cooling pill has less radiation than background levels. Source: what if.

Freaking useless for pain. I was given some post OP once, asked the nurse what the hell it was. Made me feel all sorts of weird, physically nauseous, mentally all over the shop , did absolutely nothing for the pain. I pointedly asked for panadol because that was one loopy but crappy pain killer.