The state of science education

I was listening to NPR the other morning. I like NPR. I generally give NPR the benefit of the doubt, that they're not going to be a bunch of blithering idiots going on about stupid shit.

So it's an episode of Weekday, and the interviewee is some guy who has just written a book about the periodic table. The interviewer asks a few questions which I think are reasonable considering this is going to a wide audience: "Can you tell us, what really is an element, what defines an it?" Fine, fine.

Then she asks some sort of question saying something like, "So let's say you've got this element with 2.4 protons...."

WHAT? It made me sad.