What's with US Americans and World History and Geography?

**~~Riki~~** · 03-26-2012, 05:31 PM

The video was made by a danish in a bloggers convention, as he decided to check what the bloggers knew about his country. Needless to say, all of them knew close to nothing. A few even guessed that Denmark was in Africa.

[YOUTUBE]QOXUnCoDfu8[/YOUTUBE]

**iNird** · 03-26-2012, 05:51 PM

Many Americans have no idea what is going on within their own country let alone outside of it. Also the majority of Americans do not have passports, and thus, have never traveled outside of America which could explain their ignorance on world affairs.

But these videos depicting Americans as dumb are also biased. Not this video in particular because quite frankly a bunch of a youtube stars are not a good representation of Americans, but the ones asking a bunch of Americans questions are. The footage is edited where they interview a bunch of people and show the results of the dumb ones "Uh Italy i think that's like in Brooklyn. Edited footage and the similar results could be found around the world.

**~~Riki~~** · 03-26-2012, 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by Urpean

Many Americans have no idea what is going on within their own country let alone outside of it. Also the majority of Americans do not have passports, and thus, have never traveled outside of America which could explain their ignorance on world affairs.

But these videos depicting Americans as dumb are also biased. Not this video in particular because quite frankly a bunch of a youtube stars are not a good representation of Americans, but the ones asking a bunch of Americans questions are. The footage is edited where they interview a bunch of people and show the results of the dumb ones "Uh Italy i think that's like in Brooklyn. Edited footage and the similar results could be found around the world.

Having a passport does not bring knowledge nor interest in learning.
Perhaps the educational system?

**Barreldriver** · 03-26-2012, 06:06 PM

The video seems a bit like cherry pickin', in a way fallacious. There are plenty of retarded Federal Americans but there are those with merit as well. This is rule for all of world.

**iNird** · 03-26-2012, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by Riki

Having a passport does not bring knowledge nor interest in learning.
Perhaps the educational system?

Traveling to different areas does bring knowledge and learning. The fact that most Americans do not have passports shows the majority of them have never traveled to a foreign country and are isolated in their own country.

The education system does teach geography and European history is a main course taught in public schools (well in my school it was.) I can't compare it to schools outside of the United States though.

PS:

Funny story, my history professor in college was this young graduate student. During one class she was trying to find Yugoslavia on the map for some reason (I don't remember why) and the look on her face was priceless b/c she couldn't find it. And this was a history teacher.....

**Siberyak** · 03-26-2012, 06:14 PM

Keep the people preoccupied with sports and game shows. not all americans are like this.

**~~Scrapple~~** · 03-26-2012, 06:19 PM

Let's see Geography was required in 8th Grade and in 12th Grade in my government classes we had a series of tests where we were given a blank map of each continent and had to name all the countries and their capitals from memory.

Got perfect scores on all but one because he didn't like the way I spelled the capital of Mongolia (Ulan Baator).

If a guy asked me what I know about Denmark it would be Copenhagen and Hans Christian Anderson and not much more.

**Comte Arnau** · 03-26-2012, 07:03 PM

I can't help finding the idea of someone older than 12 not having a passport so funny and random...

**~~Scrapple~~** · 03-26-2012, 07:09 PM

Originally Posted by Count Arnau

I can't help finding the idea of someone older than 12 not having a passport so funny and random...

They cost $135 and up until 2009 you didn't need one to visit Mexico or Canada just a valid government ID so most people didn't get one. Many Carribean countries also didn't require them either and some still don't.

**~~Hevneren~~** · 03-26-2012, 07:20 PM

The United States is a big country so you'll get all kinds of people. I know that Norway isn't very well known outside of the Nordic region, and generally speaking the only thing that people of virtually all nationalities think of when it comes to Norway is Vikings. Some may know our most famous composer Grieg, or the author Ibsen. A lot of young people may know about Norway because of black metal.

Anyway, it varies a great deal. I've been in touch with Americans, and some know only very few things (like about Vikings), some know about famous composers and black metal, and one American knew about our social democratic system and actually came to Denmark to study Norse mythology and the Nordic model.