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Because Americans are...well, we already have threads babbling about "Russians" not knowning the difference between different ethnic and lingustic groups with in the Russian Republic so draw your own conclusions:
There's even a map to help the reality challenged.
That's funny and sad too. And I also have Czech ancestry. Like someone said, in the USA we go to war to learn geography.
Yep. I belong to some other boards where posters are railing against the 'Checks" in "Checkoslovakiastan".
Facepalm.
wow, people are thinking they are the same?
About 26.8 percent are Roman Catholic, 2.1 percent protestant, 12.1 percent other or unidentified and 59 percent have no religious affiliation (past communist rule).
Back in the day we had a geography class. And tests were a map of wherever (US, Europe, Asia, ...) with no text and we had to fill in all the countries and their capitals. That included major rivers and mountain ranges.
That was "back in the day" before the intellectuals said memorizing was bad for you.
WASHINGTON—Following FBI reports this morning that the suspects implicated in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing are of Chechen descent, efforts to thoughtlessly stereotype the alleged terrorists were impeded by the majority of Americans’ lack of basic knowledge about Chechnya or the Chechen people, a new study has confirmed.
“Our research shows that, while many Americans would like nothing more than to make sweeping, insensitive generalizations about these two individuals based purely on their ethnic identity, this process is largely impeded by the fact that 9 out of 10 Americans truly know next to nothing about Chechnya, including even the very barest details of what or where Chechnya is,” said lead researcher Dr. Tim Kinane, adding that a majority of American citizens are almost totally unaware of Chechen history and culture, how to locate Chechnya on a map, whether Chechnya is a country or a city or a region, or that a person from Chechnya is called a Chechen.
“Clinical trials show that most individuals will make brief, fumbling attempts to stereotype Chechens based on what little they know about Russians, but eventually drop the subject entirely after running out of anything to say within seconds.”
Kinane’s team was able to confirm, however, that once research subjects were told Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim region, they were “usually pretty good to go from there.”
Back in the day we had a geography class. And tests were a map of wherever (US, Europe, Asia, ...) with no text and we had to fill in all the countries and their capitals. That included major rivers and mountain ranges.
That was "back in the day" before the intellectuals said memorizing was bad for you.
My 6th grader still does map tests, including mountain ranges and major bodies of water. He's done the Middle East and Asia this year. They did not do the former Soviet Union(other than Russia) though. I think the teacher felt like those countries were less stable and more apt to change names.
Unfortunately, people have been stupid for a long time. When I was in college in the 90s, one of the advertising case studies we covered was Wendy's 1/3 burger campaign. It failed because almost 2/3s of Americans didn't know that 1/3 is more than 1/4.
My 6th grader still does map tests, including mountain ranges and major bodies of water. He's done the Middle East and Asia this year. They did not do the former Soviet Union(other than Russia) though. I think the teacher felt like those countries were less stable and more apt to change names.
Unfortunately, people have been stupid for a long time. When I was in college in the 90s, one of the advertising case studies we covered was Wendy's 1/3 burger campaign. It failed because almost 2/3s of Americans didn't know that 1/3 is more than 1/4.
Wow..impressive. Did he have to commit to memory ?
What I see now are open book and fill in the map sheet with your colored pencils.
Back in the day we had a geography class. And tests were a map of wherever (US, Europe, Asia, ...) with no text and we had to fill in all the countries and their capitals. That included major rivers and mountain ranges.
Well to be fair, the smaller Russian republics like Chechnya and Dagestan or North Ossetia or Tartarstan or Tuva(my personal favorite) are pretty obscure to a lot of people outside the region. Central Asia itself tends to be out of the realm of knowledge for a lot of people--try getting most people to place Armenia vs. Georgia on a map let alone Uzbekistan vs. Turkmenistan or Tajikistan. I mean, I remember being in elementary school when the Soviet Union and then Yugolavia broke apart in the early 90s and having to learn close over fifteen new countries that weren't on the map for us a couple years before... I was a geography whiz and then came in third in a geography bee because I didn't know where Kyrgystan was...
Though, probably a lot of people don't even realize that Russia has 21 different republics consisting on different ethnicities and often their own languages and limited degrees of autonomy. I'd expect people would at least remember Chechnya from some of the stories invoving the war there in the 90s or terrorism in the last decade, but at the same time, Americans have a short memory(or are too young to remember those events or weren't paying attention in the first place).
I mean I heard people saying in the last week we should possibly think of attacking Chechnya--not realizing that would basically be an attack on Russian territory(albeit a separate republic within the Russian federal state).
No, Europeans are generally better informed especially on topics unrelated to the US so it isn't just them seeing news about the US on TV and instead they're just generally better educated and better informed.
Awe you're one of those?
focusing on everything negative about America. lol
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