But the earth is not round.

It’s an oblate spheroid ??

People aren't taught to be critical thinkers anymore... Also, we've been teaching kids for far too long that EVERY opinion is valid... Opinions aren't all valid... Just because you think something and you HAPPEN to find someone else that thinks the same thing, it doesn't validate your opinion... It may simply mean that you've encountered someone who's just as ignorant as you are.

"Religious beliefs appear to be correlated with one's likelihood to subscribe to a flat Earth. YouGov found that 52 percent of flat earthers consider themselves "very religious."

Now that's a key finding, don't you think?

Yes, but only 4% of them believe the earth is flat. I'm calling this click bait.

Kids don't believe anything in a school book, but they'll instantly believe a 3 minute internet video from a neckbeard with a snazzy presentation and no facts.

I wonder how many of those flat-Earth folks are really just trolling the world and having a laugh at our consternation.

The generational difference is very interesting. It tells me that the rise of the internet and the proliferation of devices that can access it has had an effect opposite to what its inventors envisioned. Cyberspace is the wild west, and there is no sheriff in town. With no editorial process, the sheer volume of misinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and lies of all kinds can overwhelm (bushwhack) the truth.

I predict that the rest of the world will declare the USA to be a failed experiment and wil vote unanimously to launch the whole batshit country into space so that it can orbit the sun all on its own far far away from Earth. It'll be a bit curvy but will be almost flat (-ish) so they can finally get their wish and 'be' the Whole World and they can pretend that no other humans exist anywhere else, and they can save a lot of money on not needing to build a stupid wall, and they can finally get down to the serious business of hating each other without all that pesky interference from other countries trying desperately to talk their suicidal brother back from the edge and to please put the gun down.

I thought homeschooling would have been a factor.

Click the link to get more info but I'll make it easy - see pictures, snipped from the article.

I think it's interesting that most flat earthers are religious.

As the republicans continue to dumb down education with creationism and religion stating the world is 6000 years old.

Whaaaaat???? Oh my gawd. Religious based home schooling? Ugh....

As the late, great Godfather of Soul, James Brown once stood up and exclaimed when they cancelled his flight, “Good god, y’all!”

Guy that plans to launch a rocket to prove the earth is flat

The notion that the earth is flat is so utterly preposterous that I think it's actually a brand or genre of humour that I don't get. Probably because it's not funny but I can live with flat earth loonies as I watch the sun go down, not go further away you'll note

No child left behind in action

The headline is slightly misleading based on the actual survey results, but not by much. And it is disturbing to see how the percentage of confidence in a round Earth decreases with younger and younger survey participants. Even us Gen-Xers didn't do too well.

I think it is a symptom of how poorly we teach people basic critical thinking in the US.

this one of the weirdest meme's of our time. Apparently it is fashoniable (at least in some circles) to hold this absurd belief.

Well, I don't believe much on millennials.

I'd like to comment on this by posting a funny vid that pretty much sums it up.

The dung heap of those civilizations, that failed to pay heed to the history of those that came before them is littered with some well-intentioned most ill intentioned societies that failed to recognize the obvious.

Have they ever heard of NASA????

That is truly concerning. As an educationalist I have long thought that education these days is too much about "training" people with "vocational skills" for that job and career, and not enough on critical thinking, knowledge and learning skills. It may explain why there are so many who are "qualified" but ignorant as sin, in my view. Education shouldn't be about creating the qualified gullible and ignorant. Education has been sacrificed on the alter of the exigencies of capitalism over recent decades, sadly, in my view.

I hope this isn't true.

Who/what would be at fault for that?

Not much you can say about that is there!