9/01Number of U.S. presidents who have held a Ph.D.: 1
Number who have said, “You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test”: 1
9/01Percentage change since 1999 in U.S. sales of hardcover books for adults and children, respectively: -12, +13
9/01Number of U.S. schools that use E-rater, a software program that reads and grades student essays: 95
9/01Percentage change since 1999 in the number of U.S. public schools that are run by private companies: +111
9/01Percentage of U.S. employers who say that a high-school graduate “has at least learned the basics”: 39
9/01Ratio of the number of pupils per teacher in Michigan’s schools to the number of inmates per guard in its prisons: 18:5
9/01Ratio of juveniles to police-officer”instructors” at a Florida sheriff’s 22-hour weekend boot camp: 5:1
9/01Number of American states that permit public-school teachers to inflict corporal punishment on students: 23
Number in which foreign-language classes are required: 9
9/01Ratio of the average time it takes a male cardinal to learn a song to the time it takes a female: 3:1
9/01Estimated number of sign-language signs in the vocabulary of Koko, a San Francisco gorilla: 1,000
9/01Minimum number of baboons forced to smoke crack in a 1989 study testing the efficacy of cigarettes as a drug delivery device: 3
9/01Endowment a tobacco company gave a U.K. university last year for a “corporate social responsibility” center: £3,800,000
9/01Hours that Amherst College agreed to ban coffee last term as part of a student’s performance piece about the drug war: 24
9/01Number of U.S. college students who were denied federal financial aid last year because of a prior drug conviction: 9,605
9/01Chance that a Denver middle-school student was suspended at least once during the 1999-2000 school year: 1 in 4
9/01Chance that a U.S. sixth- to tenth-grader reports being bullied weekly: 1 in 11
Chance that a sixth- to tenth-grader reports bullying others: 1 in 12
9/01Percentage of U.S. ninth-grade boys who say we should stop “outsiders” from influencing American traditions and cultures: 53
9/01Amount the federal government paid Harvard researchers in the 1990s to help design Russian market reforms: $40,000,000
9/01Amount the head researchers invested in Russian securities during this period, prompting a federal lawsuit: $1,300,000
9/01Number of Austrian skinheads who have attended college classes this year as an alternative to criminal prosecution: 33
9/01Minimum number of countries in which at least half the children are no longer in school by the age of eleven: 11
9/01Price of Bob Dylan’s high-school essay on The Grapes of Wrath, from a New York City collectibles dealer: $35,000
9/01Percentage of Men’s Health readers who say they have learned most of what they know about sex from television: 18
9/01Chance that an eighty-year-old American is left-handed: 1 in 100
Chance that a ten-year-old is: 1 in 7
9/01Percentage of African-American children in the South attending majority-white schools in 1976 and 1996, respectively: 38, 35
9/01Maximum fine in 1829 for teaching an African American living in Georgia to read or write: $500
9/01Amount the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, police began offering high-school students this year to inform on their classmates: $50
9/01Prize awarded an Indiana University senior in April in a national “messiest college apartment” contest: $10,000
9/01Minimum number of U.S. high schools whose students chose a custodian as a graduation speaker last spring: 2