what do americans know?

ok here's my inspiration for starting this thread...most history/geography quizes/questions anywhere on the internet or on any comp program are all AMERICAN questions! Are americans really such parochial idiots that they know nothing about the outside world? the more I find out and ask the more it seems the answer is yes! This explains clearly why they are so brainwashed into thinking they're so much better than everyone else, why they can be influenced by the media as much as they are and maybe even why they're so jingoist etc..they simply don't know any better! of course I don't want to generalise and say all americans are this way cos they aren't, but it's frightening how many are!
Any comments on the subject?

Are americans really such parochial idiots that they know nothing about the outside world? the more I find out and ask the more it seems the answer is yes!

Click to expand...

Can you give anything to back this statement up?

Try asking a person from Africa or the Middle East anything about the world and see what kind of answers you will get. I'm certain that most countries teach about their own countries history and then about the worlds history. Wouldn't you agree to that?

Try asking a person from Africa or the Middle East anything about the world and see what kind of answers you will get.

you´re talking about people who have no real chance of education ,people who have more importat things to do than going to school .....
not all people on this planet are well fed and fat like amis & €uros !

i think what rambo was trying to say : why do you have schools when people learn nothing there ( how many amerikans can show iraq on the map ??? i forgot the number )

@tyler

just look at the results - argument enough ?

Two cents or so

Excerpted from James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me :

High school students hate history. When they list their favorite subjects, history invariably comes in last. Students consider history "the most irrelevant" of twenty-one subjects commonly taught in high school. Bor-r-ring is the adjective they apply to it. When students can, they avoid it, even though most students get higher grades in history than in math, science, or English. Even when they are forced to take classes on history, they repress what they learn, so every year or two another study decries what our seventeen-year-olds don't know . . . .

. . . . Many history teachers perceive the low morale in their classrooms. If they have a lot of time, light domestic responsibilities, sufficient resources, and a flexible principal, some teachers respond by abandoning the overstuffed textbooks and reinventing their American history courses. All too many teachers grow disheartened and settle for less. At least dimly aware that their students are not requiting their own love of history, these teachers withdraw some of their energy from their courses. Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next test.

College teachers in most disciplines are happy when their students have had significant exposure to the subject before college. Not teachers in history. History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleage of mine calls his survey of American history "Iconoclasm I and II," because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school. In no other field odes this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they don't assume that Euclidian geometry was mistaught. Professors of English literature don't presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school. Indeed, history is the only field in which the more courses students take, the stupider they become . . . .

. . . . Outside of school, Americans show great interest in history. Historical novels, whether by Gore Vidal (Lincoln, Burr, et al.) or Diana Fuller Ross (Idaho!, Utah!, Nebraska!, Oregon!, Missouri!, and on! and on!) often become bestsellers. The National Museum of American History is one of the three big draws of the Smithsonian Institution. The series "The Civil War" attracted new audiences to public television. Movies based on historical incidents or themes are a continuing source of fascination, from Birth of a Nation through Gone With the Wind, to Dances With Wolves and JFK.

Our situation is this: American history is full of fantastic and important stories. These stories have the power to spellbind audiences, even audiences of difficult seventh-graders. These same stories show what America has been about and are directly relevant to our present society. American audiences, even young ones, need and want to know about their national past. Yet they sleep through the classes that present it.

What has gone wrong? (pp. 12 - 13)

Click to expand...

Comment:

I must apologize for the long citation, but I think it speaks volumes in relation to the topic. Loewen's perspective is one of those that clicks with me because he's describing a situation I see whether he stops to describe it or not. In fact, I'm very glad he has, because I obviously have not been able to.

My father, in his teaching days, taught biology and physical education. He was also a football, basketball, and I think for a season even a baseball coach. And among his generation of teachers there was a quiet joke. Football coaches tended to teach health, phys-ed, and . . . you guessed it, history. Two of the coaches at my high school were also on the roster as substitute teachers. They both taught history, and one of them taught phys-ed.

And then there is the state of our education system itself. Minor scandals erupted during the 1990s as schools moved to cover the student-teacher ratio. In some urban areas, unqualified teachers were thrown into classrooms with minimal instruction; does anyone remember The Simpsons episode (8F15) in which Lisa steals the teachers' editions of all the textbooks and brings the school to a grinding halt? At the time the episode aired (Feb. 1992) many schools were in such a state that indeed, the teachers could be rendered mute by stealing the blue-print edition.

Loewen's book criticizes much about the presentation of history, from the "mumbling lecturer" voice of most textbooks to structural and paradigmatic flaws that result in the low potential of common historical education.

But beyond that I also look at the culture itself.

In 1925, Aldous Huxley wrote of the British that they had no need for history. It was a minor point he considered during his travels around the world.

One of the evil results of the political subjection of one people by another is that it tends to make the subject nation unnecessarily and excessively conscious of its past. Its achievements in the old great days of freedom are remembered, counted over and exaggerated by a generation of slaves, anxious to convince the world and themselves that they are as good as their masters. Slaves cannot talk of their present greatness because it does not exist; and prophetic visions of the future are necessarily vague and unsatisfying. There remains the past. Out of the scattered and isolated facts of history it is possible to build up Utopias and Cloud Cuckoo Lands as variously fantastic as the New Jerusalems of prophecy. It is to the past--the gorgeous imaginary past of those whose present is inglorious, sordid, and humiliating--it is to the delightful founded-on-fact romances of history that subject people invariably turn. Thus the savage and hairy chieftains of Ireland became in due course "the Great Kings of Leinster," "the Mighty Emperors of Meath." Through centuries the Serbs remembered and idealised the heroes of Kossovo. And for the oppressed Poles, the mediaeval Polish empire was much more powerful, splendid, and polite than the Roman. The English have never been an oppressed nationality; they are in consequence most healthily unaware of their history. They live wholly in the much more interesting worlds of the present--in the worlds of politics and science, of business and industry . . . . (pp. 141 - 142)

Click to expand...

What may have been true of the English 78 years ago seems true of Americans now. "History is a lie agreed upon," declared Napoleon, or at least so say some. Among Americans we express the maxim: "Only winners write history."

And this is part of the problem.

Politics and business are of such priority to Americans in general that they tend to override other ideas. Industry and science both are subject to the needs of business and politics. And because of the priority of politics and business, history becomes especially malleable in the hands of Americans, who twist and turn it to justify their needs according to politics and business. Rarely is history viewed as something to learn from, but rather it is treated as something to exploit for profit or dominion. This exploitation is very easy in the post-modern, "watch history in the making", ratings-driven (after all, news media is an industry that responds to the needs of the business that makes up the industry) cable-news dystopia.

And remember of the American news media: sensation sells. My father used to remind me, as a child, in the abandonment of ideals: "Well, they're a business. If they don't make money they can't stay open." And you know, that idea during the 1980s and 1990s also seemed to apply to American public schools, but that's a separate argument and part of why he abandoned that line of reasoning. But insofar as news media is concerned, how much "shopping around" do we have to do in this country in order to get a reasonable representation of the news? Trudeau's Doonesbury derided USA Today, for years, as "News McNuggets". CNN Headline News now holds that title. But look at the news options: two, perhaps three major newspaper organizations in the US; growing radio conglomerates (e.g. ClearChannel), five national cable news channels of which none can deliver proper news . . . people who pick on The Economist or the Beeb for being shallow and partisan are spoiled if they don't have to suffer through the inundation of American news media. When the national simpleton's newspaper (e.g. USA Today) starts looking better not on the merits of its own work but rather the deficiencies of its peers, I'd say there's a problem afoot.

And when the history in the making is so malleable and political, and in a nation that has had, as Huxley notes, little use for history, teaching proper history becomes problematic. It's not just that "winners write history", but that the winners, realizing in later days that they may have acted inappropriately, simply "forget" about that period, and condemn themselves to similar mistakes. This is what happens in the United States. One branch of American conservatism, for instance, gave "revisionism" a bad name by aiming to justify Hitler, to justify racism, to justify eugenics, &c. Another branch of American conservatism exploits that bad name: it's offensive anti-American revisionism if we want to discuss why we've made a national holiday out of a mass-murderer (e.g. Columbus Day).

So for many Americans, history is an intolerable mess of politics and pride that no history teacher in the history or future of the world will be able to unravel in a compelling way.

And it's why Americans like historical fiction. Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obliged to make sense, and if you look history squarely in the eye, human beings seem a rather senseless and pointless lot. And so we retell history in fantastic and romantic form; history itself becomes much like religion; it's an odd assignation. History is real even though people don't believe it, therefore religion is real because it comes from somewhere and sometime in history. And all sorts of other twisted implications.

Watch Americans argue, especially conservative Americans during times of dissent and fractious debate. For many, history becomes essential when advocating a political point, but is irrelevant and "too complex an issue" to discuss when opposing that political point. Look at the things people want you to understand in order to agree with them. Look at the opposition that people brush away; there is a disparity because to the one they might seem obsessive and to the other they might seem so offensively apathetic as to really be so ignorant.

Americans are great "dittoheads" of all stripes. Whether for Rush or Sean or Joe or Bill or any number of pundits with at least minor celebrity, people become excellent regurgitators for spewing forth even less literate paraphrses of their favorite Mouth almost as if someone were trying to pretend to be Catholic by saying all the right lines in church but avoiding any discussion of faith.

We suffer on the one hand information overload. To the other, it's bad information. People argue facts and credibility, and it's true: a vague reference to a statistical reality from a known bigot and advocate of bigotry does not a real reality make. To wit: David Duke, a known racist (who once claimed to have repented his racism) used to point to crime statistics in black population centers as evidence of the inferiority of blacks. It made a compelling enough case that some people started circulating the paper around my high school in 1990 and some people were actually believing they looked at proof of the inferiority of blacks. Yet Mr. Duke would retroactively apply such a modern statistical vignette to explain why Jim Crow laws and slavery were justified; never would he discuss what role slavery and Jim Crow laws played in creating the economic and educational instability in black communities that contributed to poverty and crime.

To many Americans all history really is that malleable. For some the Bible is the only real history. For others, all history is as bogus as the Bible. For some, history is a valuable tool to be treated respectfully in order that we may learn from it; these are called hopeless idealists, liberal f***wits, Communists, and Anarchists among other things. This should not construe Communists and Anarchists to necessarily respect history; most of them do not. But for some reason, advocating a truly cooperative society on the one hand or a truly free society on the other is considered an insult by those who consider Communists and Anarchists to be hopeless idealists and liberal f***wits.

More to the point, Americans have really screwed up priorities. Our strange regard for history and civilization is a potent manifestation of the dichotomy between the virtues we raise and demand and the disdain in which we hold such effort as to make them real. We're too busy either pretending we're free or pretending we're rich to put any real effort into bringing the virtuous aspects of our ideology to life.

Insofar as the theme of Rambo's inquiry is concerned, I'd say that the answer depends on one's values. In the abstract, the American might appeal to the economic might of our nation and its technical accomplishments as the rewards of overworking ourselves and thinking too little. We're smarter because we're richer. Something approximately like that. Which is why we have no real use for history, because there are those who will say, "Smarter and richer don't go hand in hand. We're richer than others, but at what cost?" In this country, the "race" that has benefitted the most from racism over time suddenly wants to call off racism. And why? Because they perceive the efforts to combat racism as racist. That's the way it goes. That's the way we think as a collective. It's the nature of the politicians we keep electing, of the consumer trends we both create and obey on disparate occasions. Seriously: supporting terrorists and rogue regimes around the world was A-OK for most Americans until we got smacked in September, 2001. I'm not kidding about that. Pacifists who opposed the Iraqi-Bush War faced a strange conundrum; in the name of peace we were screaming to get rid of Hussein back in the 1980s when the United States helped sponsor atrocities against humanity. And those same atrocities that Americans revile were just fine and freaking dandy at the time they were taking place with the knowledge and tacit approval of the US government. Seriously: rich white people see their racism finally coming to bite them in the ass, so suddenly racism is wrong and we must end it to the effect of leaving society with a natural advantage toward the rich white people. Seriously: The American people can profit by supporting terrorists abroad, but once we get hit, now terrorism is wrong. And what little "use" Americans have for history. Ask an American about Mossadegh. If they know who he was, be surprised. If they know the Schwarzkopf irony, be even more surprised. If they can tell you the Schwarzkopf irony in connection to the Iraqi Bush War beyond the simple presence of Colin Powell as Secretary of State, an international can probably get through an evening of drinking with that person without experiencing the hideously strong desire to cram that pint glass through his teeth.

Yes, Americans are parochial idiots until you corner them individually and force them to show their true selves. Remember that with most Americans, you're seeing an aggressive style front, a subtly truculent façade. Most Americans don't start actually thinking for themselves until they have no other choice. Which is why you'll find a lot bright burnouts on the street or in the drug subcultures; they're too tired and worn-out to build a new façade, too sensitive to take the discord squarely to the naked ear of the soul, and too disappointed with their own selves for having failed to change the world to any satisfying degree.

And think mercifully of some. A recent topic talked about how Americans work too hard and too long, and while that seems like a boast to some, it's a dubious title to hold. Part of our seemingly boundless productivity comes from a mania that compels us to produce and consume without respite. And some of the parochial idiots of coming generations should be regarded as victims of circumstance, and not necessarily be held directly responsible for their state of mind.

People who let the news media establish reality and its trends for them generally have made themselves too busy in other ways to have time to stop and think for themselves. Some people are actually raising children that way, and some of those are of the age to have their own children now.

And when it's said and done, if this mighty nation ever tumbles, it will be interesting to look back through history and try to figure out at which point the decline became irreversible. I don't think it is yet, but as I will never be President of these United States of America, I can't say that I can guarantee that I will end my life as an American citizen. If I perceive the passing of a point of no return, I will jump ship and try to learn to contribute to a different society elsewhere in the world. But these United States from sea to shining sea are not nearly down for the count yet.

Do not try to outdo America at her own game; she will win until the end of human civilization. But outdo us with what our nation seems not to know: patience, tolerance, compassion, understanding. I know, I know, I know that patience wears thin and compassion is often hard to come by for such a self-destructive force. But it is the only route by which there lies the possibility that one day the sleeping giant will awaken and instead of beating somebody's brains out, it will yawn and stretch and scratch its head and say, "Okay. I think I'm finally ready."

And on that day, the world will have America at its service. Because the parochial idiots will have shaken off their pajamas torn away the cobwebs and looked themselves honestly in the mirror and decided that it is, truly, time to join reality.

- Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 1995
- Huxley, Aldous. Jesting Pilate. New York: Paragon, 1991.

how many amerikans can show iraq on the map ??? i forgot the number ) [/B]

Click to expand...

More than the number of Germans that know where Tajikistan is.

Originally posted by Jerrek
More than the number of Germans that know where Tajikistan is.

Click to expand...

Yea, sure.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/11/20/geography.quiz/

WHERE IN THE WORLD
Among 18- to 24-year-old Americans given maps:

87 percent cannot find Iraq

83 percent cannot find Afghanistan

76 percent cannot find Saudi Arabia

70 percent cannot find New Jersey

49 percent cannot find New York

11 percent cannot find the United States

The surveyed Americans got a "D," with an average of 23 correct answers. Mexico ranked last with an average score of 21, just three points from a failing grade.

Topping the scoring was Sweden, with an average of 40, followed by Germany and Italy, each with 38. None of the countries got an "A," which required average scores of 42 correct answers or better on the 56 questions.

Click to expand...

More than the number of Germans that know where Tajikistan is.



choose something more difficult



@kajoli

thanks man

Originally posted by kajolishot

WHERE IN THE WORLD
Among 18- to 24-year-old Americans given maps:

87 percent cannot find Iraq

83 percent cannot find Afghanistan

76 percent cannot find Saudi Arabia

70 percent cannot find New Jersey

49 percent cannot find New York

11 percent cannot find the United States

Click to expand...

I am sorry . . . but there is no fucking way I am going to believe any one of those statistics.

Originally posted by Redoubtable
I am sorry . . . but there is no fucking way I am going to believe any one of those statistics.

Click to expand...

There is no spoon...

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/highlights.html
I am sorry too, but it is true...Americans are stupid ignoramus blobs.

I answered every one of those questions without difficulty or hesitation.
I live, talk, and eat with other Americans.
I KNOW THEM A WHOLE LOT BETTER THAN THAT SURVEY DOES.

The results are either skewed or falsified so as to get one's attention.

national geographic has really a lot of credibility
+ we know here ( in europe ) that most people over there think swiss means cheese

I don't care.

This is something I know for myself, and a magazine definitely isn't going to convince me that I'm wrong.

My peers and I are a subject of that study, and I am telling you that the study is wrong.

Originally posted by Redoubtable
I answered every one of those questions without difficulty or hesitation.
I live, talk, and eat with other Americans.
I KNOW THEM A WHOLE LOT BETTER THAN THAT SURVEY DOES.
The results are either skewed or falsified so as to get one's attention.



*gasp* It's another conspiracy theory! They must have gone down south where the intelligence approaches zero as the latitude approaches the equator. Definetly a converging sequence.

In total, 2,916 interviews with 18- to 24-year-olds were conducted using an in-home, in-person methodology.

Look up what a survey means sometime.

My peers and I are a subject of that study, and I am telling you that the study is wrong.

I'm afraid it doesn't work like that.

Besides, we all know the National Geographic has it's own agenda of showing the shortcomings of the American Education system. That and it's run by damn pink commie bastards.

I reside in the South, where Christians are as pervasive and thick as the humidity, the great galvinizer of popular delight is football, and lawyer is conventionally pronounced law - yer.

I live in LA, comrade, Lower Alabama, that is.

However, I assure you that even the young folks o'er here in the land of whiskey, skeeters, and 'Amazing Grace' can answer correctly the questions that I read from that survey.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience is of greater authority in this matter than the pollsters at National Geographic.
I don't know or care if they're socialists, Jews, conspirators, or bluff anti-American dandies like you, but I do know they're wrong.

You go on and treat that nice, little, attention-grabbin' study with all the credulity you like, but I say Fuck it.

A couple of links

American students best in geography: The Wiscasset Newspaper, the newspaper for "the prettiest village in Maine" reminds us that American students aren't so bad at geography after all, since a three-member team from the United States won the "Geography Bee".

Why US students flunk geography: Dr. Samuel Blumenthal comments on the National Geographic survey for Worldnet Daily. Blumenthal's article is interesting insofar as it bears a similar theme to Loewen's criticisms of the teaching of American history.

National Geography Illiteracy Reflects Disinterest With The Subject, Study Suggests: ScienceDaily runs this article adapted from a 1999 news release from Ohio State University. I remember when the 1989 Gallup Poll mentioned in this article came out. I didn't believe it at the time.

National Geographic reported in June, 2002, on improving geography among American students according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. Unfortunately, the nature of that progress is such that fourth- and eighth-graders saw improvement, while there isn't much of a statistical difference for high school seniors. And the numbers aren't great. While seniors have seen a one per-cent reduction of the number of students testing "Below Basic", the report card indicates that the number of seniors testing at least "proficient" is down, as is the sparse number of students testing "advanced". In 2001, 76% of high school seniors tested below "proficient". Eighth-grade students saw a rise in the number of students testing at least "proficient". 4% tested "advanced" in 2001 in addition to 26% who tested "proficient". 70% of 8th-grade students tested in 2001 scored below "proficient".

lol @ americans

However, I assure you that even the young folks o'er here in the land of whiskey, skeeters, and 'Amazing Grace' can answer correctly the questions that I read from that survey.

Click to expand...

I don't know or care if they're socialists, Jews, conspirators, or bluff anti-American dandies like you, but I do know they're wrong.

Click to expand...

I am sorry . . . but there is no fucking way I am going to believe any one of those statistics.

Click to expand...

You go on and treat that nice, little, attention-grabbin' study with all the credulity you like, but I say Fuck it.

Click to expand...

LOL now this is as funny as it is predictable. I see it all the time..so many americans just can't accept anything bad being said about them or their country even when it is so clearly obvious and right in front of them. I actually find this quite hard to comprehend sometimes I mean is there just something that physically stops americans from seeing the truth I just don't get it!
I know that here in Australia if we saw some stats like these instead of stupidly attempting to deny it, call it bullshit or say it's some kind of anti australian conspiracy we'd accept it and laugh at ourselves for being such dumb arses, we do afterall put down our country more often than we praise it .
Ok you keep saying you could locate these places but when it's actually on a blank map in front of you (I assume the study did something like that) it may not be as easy as you first think.

Psst, what they don't tell you is that Americans won the International Geography competition this year, and that Americans visit more foreign countries than any other nation on earth. How's that for frequent flyers?

Psst, Jerrek ...

Psst, what they don't tell you is that Americans won the International Geography competition this year, and that Americans visit more foreign countries than any other nation on earth

Click to expand...

And this is significant ... how?