Ask Your Question today
I've seen tons of videos online where Americans can't even locate their own fucking country on a world map. Embarassing. Meanwhile, I'm so good at geography that I can point out every single country in Europe and their capitals on a blank map, and atleast 85% of all states in the US.
They find the dumbest people they can and just show that. That's not a fair representation of Americans. Most Americans are not as dumb as that.
Morons tend to answer surveys because of their lack of self awareness. People with average or above average intelligence decline out of fear of being embarrassed on camera. So you end up with skewed results.
This is actually really true. A lot of people who tend to be on camera for any reason on those segments are usually the ignorant kind. Studies say people who are eager to answer questions first in a room full of people are usually the least intelligent in the room so it's the same thing.
I’m not American and I’m quite terrible at geography lol. Though the funniest thing I saw was an interviewer asking people in New York when 9/11 happened and you’d be shocked at how many of them didn’t know. Especially when most of the answer is the question they’re being asked 😂
because european tv panders to the demographic of arrogant people who aint so smart themselves but want to feel superior
Most Europeans always complain about how we do things wrong in America. Like we are sooo behind and they are superior.
They also forget how massive america is no 3 largest country by landmass, no 2 if including water territory. Most americans dont NEED to travel to another country since america has enough diversity and size to warrant going to another state as a vacation.
Hard to want to learn geography if you arent intrested in the countries themselves.
The world map they show you isn't accurate anyway. You're more of an idiot for believing it.
Also, Greenland is always shown to be way larger than it actually is. Some map projections show it properly, so why can't they all?
Try mapping something correctly going from a sphere to a flat surface (it's a bitch) on a globe it's to scale but when you have to compress it to a flat surface continents are either compressed or drawn out. If it was done to scale the map would be very weird border wise since it wouldnt be a rectangular map rather a patchwork of blobs.
Some map projections do have everything looking properly. I don't see why we don't use those.
Scale is off, Not into flat earth or anything but they do raise the issue that actual observations don't match maps. Lots of places you can see things that should be behind the curve, so if anything they aren't being honest about the size of the earth.
Flat earth is for literalist bible people, but if they wanted to hide other land they didn't want us to know about all they'd have to do is leave it off the map.
I don’t know. I’m an American, and I consider myself pretty good at geography. But I agree most of my fellow countrymen are pretty miserable at it. Just kind of a jingoistic arrogance and provincial attitude, I suppose.
Funny, I've seen videos of people from other countries not being able to point out their own shit on a map.... Perhaps not an American thing but an individual thing? Hmm........
I think the majority of Americans can at least pick out the big countries and maybe the ones we had wars in the past with, and perhaps a few of our major allies.
South America, africa and western asia you are gonna be running into some problems with finding people who can pick out Uzbekistan from a map.
Every country has its complete idiots, and tv loves to show them because they're more entertaining than people of average intelligence.
because of the rotten education system we have, they dont teach history or geography
That's a complete lie. As someone who just took a European History class, I tell you, the only thing they didn't teach was the part I was most interested in.
Yeah but it's not apart of most history classes and social studies. Mainly it's just drilling in the revolutionary war the civil war, ww1, ww2 and maybe Vietnam and the Korean war if they make it that far.
My school did offer world history classes, those were the most fun. We did a colonial unit and in an activity seeing how each country took colonies I managed to trade my card representing Italy for Portugal. The poor bastard thought Italy would own the world.
On my first visit to Rome, I was amused to see something I recalled from a photo of Hitler's visit to Rome when the bromance between him and Mussolini was going strong, and everything falling to shit for both of them was a few years in the future.
On one of the high walls of a Roman building that had been exposed when Il Duce demolished a lot of poor people's homes so he could do some major excavations of the Forum, he had put up a series of four marble slabs engraved with maps showing the expansion of the Roman Empire, along with a fifth map showing the new Roman Empire that Mussolini wanted to create.
In the photo I vaguely recall, Mussolini is doing his usual gesticulation, while Hitler has his usual sourpuss expression. Hardly surprising in this case, since Mussolini's message was clear: the Italians were a great people back when the Germanic tribes were all running around in animal skins, living in hovels and slaughtering each other with bronze weapons.
Four of the maps are still on the wall. For some strange reason, the fifth has disappeared, even though there are still fascist monuments scattered around Rome and in other parts of Italy.
I've always thought that it would have been far more educational if Mussolini had showed Hitler a few more maps in the historical sequence, with the mighty, invincible Roman Empire shrinking back to piddling obscurity and poverty in a relatively short space of time.
Too bad Italy during ww2 had abysmal manufacturing capacity. They were simply not prepared for a large scale conflict. They didnt even have the slight technological superiority the germans had. Hell their tanks are a meme now for how bad they were yet American tanks were much the same, though Americans had the production capacity to keep them rolling off the line.
Weirdly, in the European History class, they taught from 1400 to the early 2000's. I wanted to learn about the people from 1000-1399, but we skipped that because of the terrible Floridian school boards.
I'm not an American, but - if it's a blank map - how do you know where the political borders are, and thus the capital cities? If you gave me a completely blank piece of paper, I'm not sure I could point out Kingstown on it. Also, what about places like Nauru which have no official capital? Surely it's fine to not know a fact that doesn't exist.
As a rule, American's don't give a shit about foreign lands. Since so many are utterly convinced that they live in The Greatest Country in the World™, nowhere else matters. Someone once made a crack that war is how Americans learn global geography, and there's some truth to that, although it's only a minority who ever bother to try to figure out the latest place their government has sent American troops in an attempt to protect the interests of Exxon Mobile on GM or some other big business.
Lots of Americans also don't know fundamental facts about their own country, and the fact that many have great difficulty locating states on a map is the least of it. A 2017 poll from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 37% of Americans couldn't name a single right protected by the Bill of Rights, 33% couldn't name a single branch of government and only 26% could name all three branches of government.
A survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that more than a third of Americans didn't know in which century the American Revolution took place, and half believed that the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation or the War of 1812 took place before the American Revolution. Also, more than half of those surveyed believed either Thomas Paine, George Washington or Barack Obama said, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’, which I find highly amusing.
Then there's the 34% who believe in ghosts, the 77% who believe in personal angels, the 73% who believe Jesus was born to a virgin, the 40% who believe in the Biblical creation, and the quarter who believe the sun orbits Earth.
I'm sure many Americans would be outraged that there exists in foreign countries a Big Dumb American stereotype, but there's some degree of truth in it. I doubt if it's anything genetic or due to the food or something in the water or air, so it can only be down to the American education system seriously failing to educate a helluva lot of Americans.
This is all very true, Booj, but few Americans would care about the Dumb American stereotype. That's because if America can hire all the geniuses in England, for example, England is no longer a competitive economic threat. In fact, it's cheaper to buy brains than it is to tax the population to invest in education.
The exception, of course, is China. The Chinese keep strategic economic skills captive in their own country. They also understand that it is far better to own the world than it is to rule the world. So far, the Chinese are the only country to understand Sun Tzu's quote, "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle”. That is that America spends trillions on defense, while China simply releases a novel virus because the Chinese know that healthcare is America's weakness. Take that, Donald Trump. You will never win at brinksmanship trying to negotiate punitive trade deals with China. Destiny has made this century theirs to dominate the Earth as masters of the Universe.
Your posts are always too long. But as an American, there are tons of different cultures! And it’s a common discussion. Personally, if I don’t know what part of the world it is people hale from, I’ll look it up.
I'm part finnish but my fathers side has HEAVY finnish culture. Not to the point in teaching Finnish (cause it's practically as hard to learn as japanese for a population that is maybe a fifth japanese speakers). Is finnish enough for me, I'll keep the american bastardization version honestly cause 98% of all authentic finnish food is terrible.
We have some of the worst education in the world in the government schools (public schools). It’s really really bad. Mostly focused on thought control and pushing random facts, with some highlights around science and tech and basic essay writing. We don’t have a sense of context for life, history ... ex: we can’t accept, and don’t want to accept our own racist past within the context of history and slave owners world wide... we have no context for anything so geography being about context of location is a no brainer fuck it item. We have a self centered, white guilt, political meat grinder curriculum:( good private schools definitely do geography)
I know the videos your talking about, its because they shoot them in california where people just pop pills and party. No one in that state has any brain cells.
In the UK we say that you lot only know where a country when you've bombed it!
Lol you're naive if you believe any of those videos. I'm American and I can't even think of anyone I know who wouldn't know basic geography and in fact many know where all the countries are on a map, I know I do. I could also tell you where any country in Europe is too but that's just because I got bored one day and decided it would be fun, I'm a weirdo, I know
It’s because they live in a bubble and think the USA is the world. Most never even leave for an OS holiday.
Good for you. You want a medal or something?
I'm glad I know where Canada is. I'd hate to end up in the US by mistake.
Is Africa a country? Why is Mexico in a North American map but it's not America? 🤤
The media lies. All the time. Sure those people on camera are genuinely stupid, but the camera crew is usually looking for the dumbest of the dumb. If they get someone who can name all the countries in the world, they wouldnt show it because that disproves their point that “all americans are dumb”
I find it hard to believe theres a lot of Americans that cant point out America on a world map.