The Home of the Brave - and not so bright
OK, let me start off with a disclosure. Some of my best friends are American and they are super-intelligent and articulate but these folk in the video below - well, it makes me worry that America is the most powerful nation on earth.
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- Posted on
Mon, April 23rd, 2007 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
- 10 responses
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April 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Yo! Where do you find these! And yes let’s try asking them where Malaysia is…
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Wow. I knew this already though. I am in the UK and most 7 year olds could tell you what a mosque is!
April 24th, 2007 at 6:16 am
I REMEMBER well an instance in my youth when the US ambassador-designate to India and Sri Lanka (or Ceylon then) when asked, admitted he did not know the name of the current prime minister of latter country.
I had also read 92% of all Americans do not have a passport for foreign travel (Canada does not count as a foreign country in this regard).
April 24th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Megan - your comment reminds me of the cartoon of an American couple in Paris, pointing to a French kid speaking French: “Hey, Mabel, that kid is so intelligent, he speaks French”.
Yeeton - I think part of the problem is that Americans only get two weeks holiday a year so that discourages overseas travel.
Pey - I wonder if the issue is more that the US education system doesn’t teach their kids much about what’s beyond US borders, rather than that these people are stupid.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Well, we’ll have to ask my sister as she has firsthand experience of the US education system! Though she’s the one who told me these quotes,” Miss! I thought Hong Kong was the Chinese Restaurant!” or “Do you know Kung Fu?”.
I have very intelligent, openminded and widely travelled friends in the US, who would not have a problem with these questions :) Media is about presenting a point of view…they might have found loads of people who knew the answer but the people who didn’t were much funnier. You can find people like that all over the world.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I once thought the American tendency to ignorance of the world was caused by the pressure to assimilate. We Americans are, after all, a nation of immigrants, and we constantly encourage people to leave their past behind and unite as Americans. Otherwise, we’d be importing every centuries old ethnic, political and religious conflict in the world. So, it seemed to make sense Americans would more or less overlook teaching their children about the rest of the world.
Yet, I began to read polls showing that Americans were not only ignorant of, say, where Malaysia is, but also ignorant of such things as evolution, the history of their own country, and the structure of their government. The final straw was a poll I came across that found half of all adults in this country don’t know the sun is the center of the solar system. So I’ve been forced to admit that our schools are failing us in nearly every area of education, not just in teaching kids about the rest of the world.
This country is becoming divided between a minority of well educated people and a majority of people who are ill prepared by their education to be responsible citizens.
April 25th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Paul & Pey, some very thoughtful points you’ve both made. Thank you for adding to the conversation. I think it’s not only in the US that the education system that has failed the nation’s children - here in the UK, there are a lot of problems and deficiencies with many people emerging the other end with literacy problems etc. Teachers are demoralised, too. Paul, it’s a good question: can we be responsible citizens without sufficient education to make decisions that matter?
April 25th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Yang-May, I think the world has come to a place where the education of people — not only in our own countries but in every country — is of importance to us all.
That’s because the decisions the citizens of each country make increasingly affect the citizens of all other countries. For instance, it should be of concern to all of us whether children in other countries are made aware of humanity’s impact on the environment, for the earth’s environment is not merely a national problem but a global problem.
Consequently, I think we’ve gone beyond the point where education is only about making us responsible citizens of our own countries. It is nowadays just as much about making us responsible citizens of the world.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:04 am
I’ve long been in favour of banning education for a few years except for reading and writing. Then, instead of being bored with years of schooling, kids would go out to find things that interest them and learn. The alternative would be to ban all entertainment. People would get so bored they’d learn something to pass the time. But would the world be better for it? Every fanatic knows lots of facts. Much help they are.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Paul, you’ve made me think about education styles in the different cultures I’ve lived in and I will be writing a full post about that in the next week or so.
David, I remember the good old days when we used to spend some evening reading aloud, chatting and playing charades. No, I’m not 90-something: this was back in the ’70s when we didn’t always watch telly and the personal computer hadn’t been invented yet. To follow on from your suggestion: Perhaps once a year, they should have an official black-out day and turn off all electricity and we’ll have to find other ways to amuse ourselves.