USA! USA! USA!

The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

I can make two obvious points here to clarify these stats.

First point:

In certain other countries (names ommitted to avoid flame wars) if you fail a certain amount of classes they ship you off to a "lower school" or roughly translated "janitor for life".  In other words, these people are not polled.  In the United States, such things are not done as everyone is given as best a chance as possible to be what they want.  The rest is left for individual effort, but this means that the bad eggs are mixed in with the good eggs for such studies where in the other countries the bad eggs are hidden in the closet and not counted.

Second point:

I remember a study once that proved that 50% of bats have rabies.  It was later discovered that the study consisted of only 2 bats.  I think the point here is obvious.