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You dont need a classical education to succeed in the US. Alot of Americans precieved ignorance is that they simply dont GAF about things that dont effect their ability to earn. Americans with strong backs and the willingness to work hard can make as much or more than alot of so called educated folk.
To an American valuable knowledge might be how to double their income not that the capital of Romainia isnt Rome. Although ive been to Constanta Romainia, Lovely place loved the black sea but watchout for the currency changers their slight of hand is imperceptible.
Americans who graduate from high school have shown, in many reliably normed surveys, to be among the lowest in acquired knowledge about history, geography, math, and science. By logical extension, one can maybe conclude that this ignorance ripples out to the general population.
From my own personal experience, Americans I have met in youth hostels while traveling exhibit, relative to European travelers, only the most basic patchwork of knowledge about literature, art, and the human condition, and carry an extremely heavy baggage of misconceptions about the world that they have been spoonfed by an entrenched media subjectivity.
This is kind of interesting to me, because I went to a private Catholic high school in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. - where we had classes in world literature, art history, philosophy, religion, etc. I and many others took advanced (AP) classes in chemistry, physics and calculus. After we graduated from high school, about 90% of us went on to college.
So, now that I think about it, I suppose I didn't have an "average American" experience while growing up after all. It didn't feel that way at the time though.
I am not sure if Americans are more ignorant or not but I do believe the mass media focuses more on events happening inside the United States than outside. The United States is so large that covering everything that happens there leave less room for covering issues abroad. If the media covered more world events than maybe Americans would be more aware of these things.
I know my fellow Americans get defensive about it, but I've found that this stereotype often holds true. As an earlier poster mentioned, I suspect that not just Americans, but many Chinese and Russians, as citizens of huge nations, tend to have more myopic views about the world outside their borders.
In addition, American educational sensibilities tend to be pragmatic and future-oriented, so history and cultural studies aren't stressed as much as in other places. But I would argue that a barfly or janitor in Spain, Korea, or New Guinea is likely to be at least as ill-informed as the (stereo)typical American.
As an aside, I suspect in thirty years (or fewer) the terms of this debate will have changed drastically. I imagine by then we will all be living in a hyper-connected, pidgin English-speaking, post-literate global society in which relatively few people anywhere know much about history and culture (after all, why commit such knowledge to memory? It's readily available in the Ether, should one be 'bored enough" to research such things.)
But most people across the globe will be intimately familiar with whatever pop sensation or celebrity gossip has momentarily captured the increasingly shorter attention spans of the masses.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jm31828
From what I have seen in my travels and time living all over the US and with my visits to other countries, I don't think the average American is really any more ignorant than anyone else. We keep hearing about these extreme cases of people here who don't even know where England is, or where our own country is on a map, but I have never met anyone who was like that. I don't know anyone who can't find most countries on a map or hasn't heard of at least major world headlines- however I have relatives in China who know almost nothing of world geography outside of finding China and maybe a few other Asian countries on a map. But yet we aren't hearing about how ignorant they are over there! So I think we (Americans) get a bad rap due to being pushed into the spotlight for better or worse, but that ignorant section of our population is really the same slice of population that almost every other place has.
In uni I remember that I had to point out where England was on the map of the world. You'd be surprised at how many people can't find countries on a map of the world.
You dont need a classical education to succeed in the US. Alot of Americans precieved ignorance is that they simply dont GAF about things that dont effect their ability to earn. Americans with strong backs and the willingness to work hard can make as much or more than alot of so called educated folk.
To an American valuable knowledge might be how to double their income not that the capital of Romainia isnt Rome. Although ive been to Constanta Romainia, Lovely place loved the black sea but watchout for the currency changers their slight of hand is imperceptible.
I know my fellow Americans get defensive about it, but I've found that this stereotype often holds true. As an earlier poster mentioned, I suspect that not just Americans, but many Chinese and Russians, as citizens of huge nations, tend to have more myopic views about the world outside their borders.
In addition, American educational sensibilities tend to be pragmatic and future-oriented, so history and cultural studies aren't stressed as much as in other places. But I would argue that a barfly or janitor in Spain, Korea, or New Guinea is likely to be at least as ill-informed as the (stereo)typical American.
As an aside, I suspect in thirty years (or fewer) the terms of this debate will have changed drastically. I imagine by then we will all be living in a hyper-connected, pidgin English-speaking, post-literate global society in which relatively few people anywhere know much about history and culture (after all, why commit such knowledge to memory? It's readily available in the Ether, should one be 'bored enough" to research such things.)
But most people across the globe will be intimately familiar with whatever pop sensation or celebrity gossip has momentarily captured the increasingly shorter attention spans of the masses.
Very well said but I also don't think this dumbing down occurred by accident. The USA hasn't successfully pulled off a protest movement since the 1960s. That's pretty alarming. In the mean time fought 4 major wars, allowed quality of life decline and debt to multiply.
USA is the entertainment capital of the world for a reason. The more people are concerned about sports, pop culture and material possessions, the less they are focusing on serious issues. Furthermore education inequality exists on purpose. And lastly, when people don't know about the world around them, preaching "this is the greatest /freest country in the world" isn't questioned
Here on the east coast of the United States, I'd say there's a significant amount of international influence and overall awareness among the population. This region is the historical birthplace of the United States. The oldest British colonies were here and there were waves of massive European immigration here in the 19th and early 20th centuries. So, we have been more directly tied to Europe especially compared to other regions in the U.S.
Cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. have a great deal of European influence in their architectures, urban layouts, museums, historic sites and other characteristics. The economic, political, government, legal and academic institutions (Ivy League universities, etc.) in the United States mainly derive from European traditions. The United Nations Headquarters is in New York City. Plus, Washington, D.C. is the headquarters of the World Bank and has embassies from countries all over the world.
We are also familiar with classical music, waltzes and polkas (almost entirely European), European bands are often popular here as well. Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare, Newton, Voltaire, Da Vinci, Mozart, Beethoven, Rousseau and Darwin are well-known names to anyone with an education here. There are tons of daily flights between east coast cities and Europe (and many other places in the world). We are also right next to the most populated region in Canada - with cities like Toronto and Montreal near the U.S. border. There is lots of international diversity among the population here itself.
So, given all of this and more, perhaps growing up on the east coast has given me a skewed perspective about how knowledgeable/ignorant the average American is about the world in general.
Last edited by BigCityDreamer; 05-18-2013 at 08:59 AM..
I see the American bashers and American apologists are out in full force.
I've traveled to many different countries. I've seen and interacted with ignorant people - as well as intelligent people - in every single place I've been.
Ignorance, racism, prejudice, and rude behavior are common place across the board because they are common human traits. The people of the United States are not more or less guilty of them, generally speaking.
Last edited by Rozenn; 05-18-2013 at 03:50 PM..
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