'Welcome to America' a real brits perspective on the USA

so? we don't ask you to name and point all the provinces in russia either?

we can point to the US, to canada, to paraguay, to bolivia, kenia, .... almost every country in the world

from the clips i've seen, americans aren't very good at that. and that only proves they don't give a damn what happens outside the US (how many would know the name of the mexican president?). and as long as that is the case, the downward spiral will continue imho

During highschool we had to point out 200+ countries, cities, and geological features from memory. I got a perfect score as did quite a few other people.
 
Stupid Americans with their Dr Pepper and KFC...

Besides, there are only like 6 or 7 countries in Europe worth mentioning anyways
 
I believe that the poll numbers are wrong. To say that 1 in 3 can point out Iraq makes me think they asked 6 people coming from the optometrist office, after they have had their eyes dilated. I have a passport, I speak french (poorly), and spanish (even more poorly) and I can manage some Japanese. I have been to most of the major European capitals, what is more, a great number of friends have been around the block as well.

Now for the agreement, American education really lacks geography. The whole space race thing got everyone on math and science. All soft sciences people went into law or business.

Now I had a Dutch professor at my University who fell in love with America in his 20s. The reason why he decided to emigrate was the people, who he found to be strangely friendly. I have to agree most Americans will pour themselves out on anyone who asks for help. Americans love to show off, and will gladly show you around. What some times seems like Americans being a jerks, is more the gregarious nature of Americans.

Possibly, we all of us, Americans and Europeans need to look a bit deeper and appreciate our most basic qualities.
 
I fail to see how a person's ability to point out Liechtenstein on a map is in direct relation to how considerate they are and how much they care about the rest of the world. :think:
 
You expect us to know where a ton of little countries are far, far away from us when you can't even point out all the similar sized states far, far away from you?
I fail to see how a person's ability to point out Liechtenstein on a map is in direct relation to how considerate they are and how much they care about the rest of the world.
Now, I'm gonna say this without any bias, so please concentrate on the content, and don't bash the messenger (as in this case: me):

People say that Americans should know about foreign countries because they play "world police" and actively intervene in things they actually don't know much about. People say that it's okay to help others, but you should be damn sure they actually need help. If you don't know what's going on in the world and why it is going on, you should stop trying to improve it with questionable measures.
 
Now, I'm gonna say this without any bias, so please concentrate on the content, and don't bash the messenger (as in this case: me):

People say that Americans should know about foreign countries because they play "world police" and actively intervene in things they actually don't know much about. People say that it's okay to help others, but you should be damn sure they actually need help. If you don't know what's going on in the world and why it is going on, you should stop trying to improve it with questionable measures.
"World Police" is something that was made up by those who disagree with America's actions in other countries. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. America didn't proclaim itself the "World Police". Besides, we are talking about average Americans, not high ranking government and military officials.

But I still fail to see how a quick geography lesson will solve any problems. I'm sure Hitler knew exactly where Poland was.
 
Now, I'm gonna say this without any bias, so please concentrate on the content, and don't bash the messenger (as in this case: me):

People say that Americans should know about foreign countries because they play "world police" and actively intervene in things they actually don't know much about. People say that it's okay to help others, but you should be damn sure they actually need help. If you don't know what's going on in the world and why it is going on, you should stop trying to improve it with questionable measures.

yes because we all decide in a meeting every other tuesday who we want to attack,invade,liberate etc so we should ALL be completely knowledgable about the rest of the world. Its the higher ups that decide when and why we should do something and they tell us why its right so we vote it go. when someone says "america" they seem to assume we all take the same stance on a specific subject. (not to bash u interceptor)
 
Except that all of Europe is only slightly larger than the United States. The passport argument applies to this too. You expect us to know where a ton of little countries are far, far away from us when you can't even point out all the similar sized states far, far away from you?

Countries over there are the size of states over here. All the states over here just happen to belong to one country unlike over there.

To elaborate more on this ...

The concept of this country is a bit like what the EU has been trying to go twards. Europeans don't seem to understand that the USA was originally 13 different countries that banned together to kick the British out. The idea worked surpisingly well, so they decided to stick with it.

In essence, the USA is 50 countries, that decided to pool their resources in a similar fashion as the EU is now. There were requirements for other parts of the continent to become part of the US, and joining allowed for easier trade within the states.

I know it's not a perfect run down of the US, but it's a basic idea of it. Much of which is eroding.

As far as American's not knowing about the outside world, there is a shitload to keep track of in our own "little" one. I forget the exact numbers, but a large percentage of the US population hasn't left their own state, let alone the country. My step mother left California for the first time in her life at the age of 51. Living in Missouri, a lot of people I talk to haven't left this state, and they are only an hours drive from Illinois. Anyway much of the Fed seems to go and police the rest of the world whether or not the citizens give 2 shits or not, Billy Bob knowing where Dubai is has jack didly to do with whats going on in Iraq. He should be making his voting decisions on actual information about whats going on there, and not discounted because he's not sure if Iraq is somewhere near Iran, or Venzuela.

Lastly, the (public) education system in the USA spends most of it's time brain washing us all to believe we are the greatest place in the world. There are more years in school we learn "US history" than "world history." In fact the only world history I can think I was tought was about the Roman empire and WW2 (which was all about the holocaust and not about the war itself), otherwise it was the conquistadors, American Revolution, Civil War, and Russians luanching a satellite into space, and AMERICA ON THE MOON BITCH!. My history classes always kind of glossed over other countries achievements. But I was in grade school when the cold war ended (still recall maps on walls of east and west germany).

Now that I think about it, most of my high school education was trying to convince me that the USA was saving the world from communism.

My older brothers history education was even worse, as they practically ignored anything after WW2. We both spent more time on Anne Frank than learning about how and why Hitler came to power, and about how destructive WW1 and 2 were. They seem to give the impression those wars were insignificant and only lasted a few days.

I'm a bit of a history buff (even if I forget most of what I take in) and spend a suprising amount of time reading about the history of other countries, some of which I never knew even existed.
 
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So it's Americans teaching American children about America and how America is 'the greatest place on earth'

Right, so, you think this is a good thing?
 
here's another example of how different things are wherever you go. My education was nothing like that.

ditto.

.....and in my high school geography class, we had to memorize every single country and it's capital, in addition to the United States, and I had to do the same in college.
 
ditto.

.....and in my high school geography class, we had to memorize every single country and it's capital, in addition to the United States, and I had to do the same in college.
Every single country? Thats overkill. We had to do a project in Geography when I had just started at high school. I choose Sao Tome and Principe because I had never heard of it. I even had to convince my Geography teacher that it was a real country.
TBH I can't remember it's capital, all I remember is that Sao Tome is the bigger of the two and it has some crazy weather.
 
I was listening to British Forces Radio on night when the war started (I was in Kuwait) and I heard this BBC talk show that was talking about how America and the Brits relied on each other so heavily. There was on line from that show I will never forget, the guest said "war is how you teach the Americans geography" and it took me a minute to realize just how true that was!!
 
what do you mean a "real Brit" who's a "fake Brit"?
 
I have a number of American friends and they're all pretty well travelled and educated, and we've had some pretty interesting conversations. I think that it would be unrealistic to deny the fact that there are 'dumb Americans' who really don't know where Yupe (Europe) is and think that about 1000 people live in England, but it would also be unrealistic to assume that everyone in the States is like that. The shear size and population of the country is of course going to result in huge variations, and it would be far more sensible to compare the whole of Europe to the States as opposed to just one country.

I'm fairly sure there are plenty of people in England, Germany and France who couldn't care less about America or where it is, and I know for a fact there are some people from areas of England (from all classes of society) who spend their whole life in one place....much the same as people who spend their whole life without leaving the state of Alabama.

What is fairly clear though is that the American media and the general populus are fairly happy to just get on with what they're doing in their own country and a good majority are unaware of exactly what the US's foreign policy is. This is indeed why Sept 11th came as just a massive shock to so many Americans, as they genuinely had no idea what was going on. This is not through intentional ignorance, but purely because they'd rather get on with their own lives than worry about what their government is doing elsewhere.

I'd hasten to add that the term of 'America: World Police' is NOT something dreamt up by America hating countries. It's a general term that's used by many people and IMO is quite true in many ways. The States are the only true remaining super power and sadly for whatever reasons which I can't be bothered to talk about here feel the need to intervene in other areas of the world. Unfortunately most of Europe chooses to do the same thing so we're not that much different.

All in all though, I would say that many people I've come across in the States have a more limited knowledge of Europe than Europeans have of the States. My friends have all commented how amazed they were at how much of the US news we got here when in the States there was NEVER any news about Europe. We in England etc seem to care a lot more about what goes on in America than the other way round.

Oh...and incidentally I could probably name most of the 50 states and locate them pretty well. I'm pretty good at my Geography :)
 
here's another example of how different things are wherever you go. My education was nothing like that.

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and assume you went to school in Colorado. I lived in Denver on and off as a kid, the education system there is far superior to the system in Southern California.
 
Yes most of my education was in Colorado, but strangely the quality can vary quite a bit from school to school, district to district. My girlfriend went to an inner city school, which many people equate with as being a bad, poor educating and violent place, but they had more accelerated programs than my highschool(which had none) and had better teachers. My high school sucked BAWLS. The only extra cirricular activities were sports, theatre and chess club, so if you weren't a jock or an uber dork you were out of luck, and we had NO accelerated programs, which sucked for me. The funny thing is, in gradeschool, they had accelerated programs and even made new ones for exceptional students. And this was in the same town. So I went from doing science and writing 3 or 4 grades ahead of me, to being told in highschool that I need to do 30 problems a night of the same exact math that I already knew, and they were surprised when I got bored and stopped doing all the work besides tests(which i aced). And when I tried to tell them what was up, they just sorta sat there:

"so, why aren't you doing your homework?"
"Because it's 30 problems of the same math, only with different numbers"
"you always do well on tests"
"that's why I shouldn't be in this class"
"well, what can we do to motivate you?"
"let me test out of this class and put me in a higher one so I can be challenged"
"well we can't do that, you must take this class"
"But I already know everything that's being taught"
"..."

My senior year I switched to an "alternative" high school and wow, very different. They actually taught you things you didn't know and let you test out of everything you were already familiar with, if only I had switched earlier. ah well, the past is the past.
 
Re' my previous post re Dom Jolly in Russia, just watched Dom Jolly getting pissed in Mexico, lots of Taquila drunk, very funny. Highly recommend this programme.
 
"so, why aren't you doing your homework?"
"Because it's 30 problems of the same math, only with different numbers"
"you always do well on tests"
"that's why I shouldn't be in this class"
"well, what can we do to motivate you?"
"let me test out of this class and put me in a higher one so I can be challenged"
"well we can't do that, you must take this class"
"But I already know everything that's being taught"
"..."

My senior year I switched to an "alternative" high school and wow, very different. They actually taught you things you didn't know and let you test out of everything you were already familiar with, if only I had switched earlier. ah well, the past is the past.

I had the same problem. It was made worse by a retarded law put in place by California that removed Spanish speaking teachers assistants. The law was ment to encourage more teaching in english, all it really did was make the teachers have to learn spanish, and spend more time on the same subject because they had to fight a language barrier along with the idiots.

What really sucked was my school had some excellent teachers, but refused to pay them for cost of living increases and lost a lot of them. By senior year we had lost 99% of the older/wiser teachers, and gone thru atleast 1 set of fresh out of school teachers.

Unfortunately for me, to goto the "upper class" school which lacked the language barriers ment I had to move a block closer to it. But it was ok for people from another district to be bussed to my high school, but I couldn't goto an alternate high school in my own district (and technically I was closer to).

Fucking California Public schools.
 
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