NASA Funds Program To Indoctrinate Kids Towards Globe View
Study of how to make kids conform to the globe ideology
NASA vs. The Children: A Flat Earth Tragedy
Once upon a time, in classrooms across Greece and America, innocent children looked out their windows, used their eyes, and—gasp—thought the Earth was flat. Naturally, this posed a catastrophic threat to the scientific orthodoxy. Enter the National Science Foundation, a proud arm of NASA, wielding its mighty grant money like a globe-shaped hammer.
In 1990, a study was launched—not to understand what kids thought, but to correct them. Because clearly, if 5-year-olds think the Earth is flat, the only logical response is to stage a full-scale psychological reprogramming operation. The mission? Make these round-Earth heretics conform to the sacred doctrines of sphericalism.
The kids, bless them, described the Earth as flat, stationary, and with an actual edge (where you might fall off if you’re not holding on tight enough). But instead of giving them a gold star for observational accuracy, the researchers labeled them “naive” and got to work reshaping their tiny minds with styrofoam balls and carefully-worded questions.
Responses like “the Earth is a circle” or “you could fall off the edge” were treated like dangerous propaganda, while “sphere” was praised as the correct answer—because nothing says “critical thinking” like learning to repeat what your textbook says.
To make matters more educational, the study even modified the questionnaire for Greek kids—just in case cultural variation got in the way of spherical conformity. Turns out, whether in Athens or Arkansas, kids start off flat and have to be rounded out by the system.
In the end, NASA achieved its goal: a new generation of globe believers. Sure, they had to override children’s natural perceptions, but hey—what’s a little mental gymnastics when you’re defending the honor of a spinning space ball?
Transcript
Transcript
publication was based was supported in
part by grant
number NSF now for those don’t know it
says it plain as day National Science
Foundation the National Science
Foundation is an arm of
NASA let me say that again the National
Science Foundation is an arm of
NASA so this was a NASA
grant conducted
there was a NASA grant issued for this
specific
study so that NASA could get an
understanding
of how they were going to affect the
psychology of our future
generation now the paper was put out in
1990
so if you have any children that were
born in the
80s you can
Bet that if you start researching
the policy changes
in preliminary middle school and high
school education the curriculums you can
guarantee that from say 2000 on when you
compare the
curriculums they NASA had the
curriculums changed and the textbooks
changed to reflect the worldwide view
they need our future
children to agree
to let’s go to the abstract
here in this
report we present the results of a
cross-cultural study on children’s
knowledge about the shape gravity
movement and location of the earth and
about the day night cycle the subjects
of the study were elementary school
students from
Greece numbering 90 and equals 90 that’s
what it means 90 students and the United
States 60 students the results of the
study showed that the children in both
samples constructed similar initial
concepts about the earth and went
through similar steps in the process of
changing these concepts to make them
conform to the currently accepted
scientific notions
both the Greek and the American children
conceptualized the earth as
flat and stationary and thought it was
located in the middle of the solar
system they also thought that the things
that things fall down not toward the
center of the spherical
earth and that the day night cycle is
caused by the movement of the sun and
the moon
in the process of changing these
concepts the Greek and American children
formed similar
misconceptions now let me comment on
this key words
here changing these concepts to make
them
conform make them
conform to the currently accepted
scientific
notions so they’re not going to allow
these children they didn’t they didn’t
want these children thinking for
themselves they didn’t want these
children being aware of what they see
every single day as prelim elementary
school students and these are students
from 3 years
old 3 or four years
old all the way to 12 years old keep
going okay misconceptions in science
they immediately begin the
paper defending the National Science
Foundation and NASA’s ideology a
cross-cultural investigation of
children’s conceptions about the Earth
the Sun and the Moon greek and American
data misconceptions in science one of
the most interesting results of research
in cognitive science and science
education during the last 10 years has
been the realization that students often
often construct powerful misconceptions
of science con concepts
okay naive concepts in the process of
knowledge acquisition in our studies of
knowledge acquisition in astronomy we
have identified a number of
misconceptions that elementary school
children in the United States have
regarding the shape of the earth
erggo bisad 1987 1988 i don’t want to
keep quoting the authors because they’ve
already gotten me upset the way they’ve
drafted this biased paper and this and
conducted this biased research
on the basis of this research we have
come to the conclusion that children
form misconceptions of the earth’s shape
because they find it very difficult to
give up the idea that the earth is
flat the presence of these
misconceptions reveals that children are
not blank slates with respect to earth’s
shape when they receive the information
that the earth is a sphere but that they
have constructed an initial naive
concept of the earth according to which
the earth is flat keep calling these
children naive because they’re
young let’s go to procedure questioning
procedure we follow renee first
grade if you walked and walked for many
days in a straight line where would you
end up she
answers you’d end
up
where you’d end up somewhere where you
where you lost yourself what if you kept
on walking if you turned around you’d be
lost would you ever reach the end of the
earth yes could you fall off the edge of
the earth no why not because once you
fall off you can’t get back on well
would you ever fall off though no but
there is an edge of the earth yes what
if what if you could get back on do you
think you could fall off then yes if you
took the edge of the thing and you had
one hand on it you could fall off
easier wow the questionnaire was
originally developed in the United
States as part of a larger project on
knowledge acquisition in astronomy and
was first administered to the American
children it was translated by the first
author who is a native speaker of Greek
and was administered to the Greek
children with a few modifications such
as the addition of styrofoam models to
investigate the earth earth shape
concept let’s go to
results earth shape table two presents
the American and Greek children’s
responses to the factual question what
is the shape of the earth as can be seen
the same kinds of verbal responses were
obtained by both groups of children but
with a different distribution round was
the preferred response by the younger
group in the Greek sample 60% for the
kindergarten and 86.6% for the third
grade children and the older children in
the American sample 85% 90% for the
third and fifth grade respectively the
Greek sixth graders preferred the term
sphere
43.3% which was not used by the American
fifth grade children only
5% the majority of the first grade
children in the American sample said
that the Earth’s shape is a circle 70% a
response not nearly as common in the
Greek sample 3.3% finally some of the
the kindergarten children in the Greek
sample 13.3% said that the earth is
shaped like a triangle a square or just
flat revealing the presence of an
initial naive concept there we go again
with
naivity this type of verbal response was
not present in the American first grade
children although it is present in our
studies of American preschoolers except
for one child who did not respond to
this question but who later drew a
rectangle to indicate the shape of the
earth
