What Americans Know

You couldn't make some of those answers up could you. I should say however that if you tried repeating the exercise in the UK, I fear you'd probably get similar before very long.

I remember we gave a student who was doing a work placement with us blank maps of Europe and Africa and asked her to identify countries. She got France Italy Spain and Germany. Got Holland and Belgium the wrong way round, identified Norway as Sweden, and then gave up. She fared worse on Africa. She correctly identified South Africa, (there was a clue in there somewhere) Identified Egypt as Saudi Arabia and then gave up.
 
Oh come on, Warbler, if I asked you to fill in Mauritania, Botswana and Chad on a blank map of Africa, off the top of your head and in all honesty, would you get them right? The average Botswanan wouldn't have a clue where Lithuania was, so let's assume everyone's a bit 'thick' about countries where they don't have some connection.
 
Originally posted by krizon@May 9 2007, 06:20 PM
Oh come on, Warbler, if I asked you to fill in Mauritania, Botswana and Chad on a blank map of Africa, off the top of your head and in all honesty, would you get them right?
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Yes and I did :P

The ones I struggled with was more to do with sequence aroudn places like Benin, Togo, Gineau Bissau and the Ivory Coast etc. I think I got 35 of the 47 correct, though was probably more familiar with the continent then than now. Like I said the failures owed more to going out of sequence, as that has a domino effect once you get one wrong etc. I'd be concerned if I couldn't do at least 50%
 
But that's the point I'm making - if you're very familiar with something, then it's easy, not for someone who isn't. We can all look bright when we know something well. It doesn't make the other person 'thick' - just not informed about the same thing you are. Now, if your guinea pig didn't know the capitals of major countries, that would be ignorance of general knowledge, but I think being asked to locate obscure African countries isn't a test of intelligence, it's a test of knowledge, which can only be tested if one has some prior input - and I speak as one who lived there for several years!
 
I'd accept that it's not a test of intelligence, more a question of awareness, but I'd still expect a university student to manage more than 1 African country, and she got that largely on the fact she looked for the southern most and decided that must South Africa. Egypt's normally taught in schools, and it's not as if Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Libya, Morocco, Eritrea, and Algeria were out of the news at the time. The fact that she only managed half a dozen Western European countries too was a bit of a concern, hence why I wondered if the same exercise was repeated on the streets of the UK, whether it wouldn't take too long before we found enough indigenious eejits to come out with stuff similar to the Americans.

Personally, I'm prepared to forgive the guy who started listing respective states as being in the axis of evil, as I thought I detected something of a twinkle in his eye, that suggested he knew he was wrong, but was having a laugh etc
 
Listen, I am American, and I was educated there but have the benefit of having British ancestors. The education system, like the news, is concerned with local items. Every teeny locale you care to go to, even in the middle of nowhere, seems to have the same comforts, ie like mini universes from which there is totally no need to veture out because the inhabitants have all they desire within arms reach. So interest in what goes on outside is minimal. I used to hate it but now I look on and kind of understand how they feel, they have everything they want/need so lose the will to investigate or try hard at anything. They are very domesticated which is how the government likes to keep them! :D

I found this smothering and scary - in fact terror evoking. So I left as soon as I was old enough to get my own passport, but I had to travel a very long way before I even found a place where I could get a passport!

Being of British descent I had a slightly more rounded education than most, however I cannot find my way out of a paper bag - and the reason is because a lot of people in the States are happy to live in a paper bag as long as it has a shopping mall, with cinema, ice cream and designer clothes outlets, and a swimming pool. In daily life you never see a map nor do you wish to. Who cares what goes on in outer mongolia when you can get 150 flavours of ice cream and a triple big mac for a couple of dollars ?

Some of America is different, of course, this is a generalisation. And I have to say that I have found a certain percentage of Brits to be the same. Just exchange the shopping mall for a decent pub, beer, indian takeaway etc. and they are happy never to look further.
 
What i couldn`t beleive when i went to the States a couple of years ago was the total lack of World News on all the networks. It`s no wonder they are way too insular.
 
For about 18 months during the latter part of the war, my father was stationed in Baltimore, on loan to BOAC from the RAF, flying the Clippers to and from the UK, up and down both sides of the Atlantic.

He was billeted with an American couple, and one day he happened to mention after a news item on the radio about some action in Germany that he'd flown missions over that part of the country.

Anyway, the couple were absolutely amazed to learn that Britain was actually taking part in the war, and had been doing so since 1939. They thought that the expression "Allied Forces" was synonymous with "Americans".
 
Isinglass has it right, though. It's not as if Britons, adventurers as they once were, are uniformly hungry to understand the world at large. There's enormous ignorance even now, in spite of daily news bulletins, about 'overseas'. Like the young Cornish couple who told my Mother, on learning that we'd just arrived back in the UK from Africa, that they'd been 'abroad' for their honeymoon. In Scotland. :what:
 
Euro, I agree with you about the news over there. I am usually desperate when visiting relatives for any news about anything going on farther than 20 minutes down the road from them. The bulletins are concerned with only their own locale.

Kri, I love that story! I have a good one too. Sadly whenever my hubby and I are on hols in the UK and an Amerian tourist hears my accent they always attach themselves to me thinking they have something in common - wrong! Anyway, in one case a very kind and motherly type, totally harmless, asked in all seriousness why we did not have mixer taps over here. With all of the interesting things, places, food etc she had witnessed upon her first foray away from the US this was still the thing which most occupied her mind, mixer taps! :laughing:
 
I asked my girlfriend the other day if she'd ever been to Germany before. She replied, "Yes", so I asked where abouts she went. "Belgium" was her reply...
 
Originally posted by jairducochetfan@May 14 2007, 05:54 PM
I asked my girlfriend the other day if she'd ever been to Germany before. She replied, "Yes", so I asked where abouts she went. "Belgium" was her reply...
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Is she blonde ? :P
 
Isinglass - yes, that's about the limit of their interests, I'm afraid. My first visit to the USA was with an American female work colleague, back in 1975. I couldn't believe that we spent 20 minutes circling the shopping mall car park, with her looking for somewhere to park nearest to the mall doors. I pointed out several parking slots, but no, they meant we'd have to walk about a minute from the car to the mall. So round and round we went! She also used the car to go up to the 'gas' station, not to get petrol, but to get some cigarettes. If she'd walked (and she was very overweight, yet young) it would've been maybe five minutes, tops.

One evening, after dinner at her parents, where we were staying, I said I was going out for a walk. They lived in a typically pleasant suburb, it was still light, and although they were amazed at my crazy idea, off I went. The problem was, there were only grass verges which were actually people's lawns, or the road. I walked on the road to avoid some small rainwater ditches, and people stopped their cars to ask if I wanted a ride. When I said no, thanks, I'm just out for a walk, they looked at me as if I was perhaps deranged and dangerous, and shot off.

I remember on a later trip, trying to walk back to Houston from a gym, about 3 or 5 miles out of town. There were no buses and I'd done around 2 miles when a car stopped and the guy insisted he give me a ride into town as it was 'very dangerous out here'. I asked him how did I know he wasn't a serial killer, picking up women and murdering them? He looked genuinely amazed - I took the ride with one hand on the door handle, but it turned out he was okay, and dropped me at the hotel. I gave up trying to walk around at night - everywhere I went, I kept getting told how dangerous it was. To cap it all, I was thundering down into an underpass one evening, not particularly pleased to do so, but it was the only way to the other side of the road, when two young black youths came sauntering in. I strode manfully up to pass them, and they actually backed away, looking quite alarmed. One called out, "Whatcha doin' out, lady?" And I called back airily, "Just enjoying a walk, young man!" They probably thought I'd be featured on the evening news later, as an escaped madwoman.
 
Yep. you are right. I have spent hours in a car just going a few yards to get food. ciggies etc. And been considered dangerous because I wanted to walk somewhere!

Weird huh? Friends come to visit me and cannot belive how mean I am because I refuse to drive them, and make them walk to the shops, which are 15 minutes from our flat.
 
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