US people and geography

[Rocket]

To lapinschous from one of my favorite movies:

[SpanishFan]

Originally Posted by Junkmale

Someone on Alizee Forum is hardly an indication of the depth of feeling in the former Czechoslovakia.

Very true. In the same way, some tweets are hardly an indication of the feeling or the knowledge a whole country has.

[lefty12357]

I think every country has it's fair share of ignorance and stupidity. And I think it's more of a function of the fact that we are all humans, not because of our country of origin. We humans have made some incredible achievements, but we still have a lot of room to improve.

And I agree with SpanishFan about the tweets. I wouldn't rely on a small sampling of tweets to determine anything. And sometimes it's hard to tell when people are being sarcastic or tweeting something stupid to be funny, or just to annoy others.

[lapinschous]

Originally Posted by Rocket

To lapinschous from one of my favorite movies:

lol wut ?

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by lapinschous

Basically the same thing, same people, same language, same culture . Lots of czechs and slovakians want to reunite into czechoslovakia , just like Frantisek on alizee forum.

dont think so - big % of people are happy from separation. Maybe only just the old generation still think CS was better, but the young people no. And now, when we can say borders dont exists thanks EU, the idea of reunion is really useless. Czech and Slovak people have another view on many situations. You can see it example by EU... when Slovakia started to use € , czech people (or more politics) said it was the biggest fault, cause they see in € the right way to hell... and many other reasons.

[Rocket]

Originally Posted by lapinschous

...they know I'm the most patriotic french guy on the surface of the earth...

That's why!

[Corsaire]

A majority of Americans consistently show poor knowledge of geography when they are tested for it. This has been amply documented time and time again, and I really don’t see why anyone would be arguing about this. Google is right there at your fingertips for those who want to challenge this fact.

Now, although many other countries will rate better than the U.S. on this specific knowledge, this does not mean that Americans are the worst at it and I am quite sure that some other country can be found where people will do, on average, the same, or even worse than Americans. Another point is that if you are American and you know your geography, well, that just means that you are not part of “the majority” of Americans who don’t know their geography.

And Karin, let’s say that Americans were known for their perfect knowledge of geography and that some Americans were calling for the invasion of Chechnya (or Russia), would you feel much better? I know I wouldn’t.

[Junkmale]

Originally Posted by SpanishFan

Very true. In the same way, some tweets are hardly an indication of the feeling or the knowledge a whole country has.

Absolutely correct SF!
In all honesty though.....although Karin is more than capable of speaking for herself...i don't think for one moment that she was suggesting that ALL American's are ignorant of basic Geography?

It's been blown way out of proportion (excuse the pun).

[ALS]

The problem is that schools don't spend the time they use to on subjects such as geography, civics, or even how their government works. Most Americans can't even tell you who their elected officials are. Yet ask them who got kicked off of American Idol last week, they can tell you.

There are several embarrassing videos on YouTube that late night talk show host Jay Leno has up of a segment of the show called Jay Walking.

Here is a fun one on Geography.

[lefty12357]

The problem with things like "Jay Walking" is they often cherry-pick the ignorant people for the broadcast for comedic effect. It would be less interesting and not very funny to broadcast the videos of people who get the answers right. But having said that, it's unfortunate that they are able to find anyone so ill informed. I think many US schools have not been doing as good of a job as they used to on teaching subjects such as geography and civics. My guess is that the emphasis is more on preparing people to be workers rather than well rounded citizens.

It reminds me of an interview I saw with author and historian David McCullough. He said that after a speech he gave, a college student came up to him and told him that she had learned so much from his talk. She said that she hadn't realized before that the first 13 states of the US were all on the east coast. He was flabbergasted that an otherwise, obviously intelligent person would not have learned this, and it pointed to a serious problem in our education system. By the way, if you are into US history and its connections to France, his book "The Greater Journey" might be a good read.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/bo...avidmccullough