Low level of general knowledge

The Herald reports:

Barely half of New Zealand adults know that it takes 365 days for the Earth to go around the sun.

Fewer than half can name the seven continents, or work out how far a car travels at a constant speed in a given time.

Only 32 per cent know that the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840.

The results, from a poll of 1000 New Zealanders aged 18 and over for the NZ Initiative, has exposed what the business think tank calls “serious gaps in public knowledge”.

It blames New Zealand’s flexible curriculum which allows each school to design its own local curriculum, and calls for a more structured education system to ensure that all New Zealanders acquire “a core of knowledge”.

The NZ Initiative report is here. Curia did the polling for it and I was stunned at how many people didn’t know such basic facts.

You can test yourself on the Herald website.

A summary of results is below.