I came across this article while looking for expat news to tweet. I know we’ve discussed American exceptionalism quite a bit and could easily blame most of this lack of knowledge on indifference (“Hey, who cares, everybody knows America is the greatest place on earth, why should I care or bother about anybody/anyplace else?”) but the author gives perplexing statistics that really surprised me.
In addition to Sarah Palin claiming she could see Russia from her house (see http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/seealaska.asp for explanation of how SNL involved in creating misquote) and Paul Ryan referring to Canada as “overseas,” maybe it’s not such a big jump???
“A 2007 study conducted by a George Washington University researcher showed that our seeming indifference about other countries and cultures begins at a very early age in American school systems.” Among some of the findings (emphases mine):
- 25 percent of U.S. high school students who were bound for college couldn’t name the ocean that lies between California and Asia
- 80 percent of the surveyed students didn’t know that India is the world’s largest democracy
- 80 percent of the surveyed students couldn’t point out places like Israel on a global map
A separate 2012 survey conducted by the nonprofit education company World Savvy, along with the International Baccalaureate Organization demonstrated:
- 78 percent of the students didn’t know that Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language in the world
- 45 percent thought the most common was English
- 77 percent of respondents couldn’t identify Canada as America’s largest trade partner
- 72 percent had no idea what region Afghanistan was in
“And the kids aren’t the only ones to blame, as many American adults also seem to have a huge lack of interest in learning about other countries, how those countries live, and the languages they speak — which certainly isn’t the case when it comes to other countries knowing about American ways and people.”
I cannot imagine that the education system has gone that far downhill. I’m in my late 50’s and perhaps fortunate in having gone to Catholic schools (though there’s no way I would have agreed at the time). In university, many of my friends had gone to public schools and they certainly seemed to be very well educated. So what has happened? Why are the schools so bad? What other reasons could there be for such a lack of knowledge and incentive?
*It used to amaze me, when we lived in Brazil, a third world country at that time, that Brazilian school children learned the names of the 50 US states and their capitals, whereas most American students back home in the US didn’t have the slightest idea where to find Brazil on a map of the world.
Most American students today would be hard pressed to name more than a handful of the US states. We have a generation that is generally clueless about the world in which we live.
I think these are just examples of lack of knowledge in general, as the article suggests in the end. Many Americans don’t even know facts about the US itself. One of my friends didn’t know that Lee Oswald was a communist, and another didn’t know that a presidential candidate needs a majority of the electoral college votes to be elected (he thought a plurality was enough).
@Roger – and these “clueless people” will elect the next President. 🙁
I have many friends from India who say that one of the main reasons they could never return there to live, is the fact that their children would not be able to survive the school system.
@Shadow Raider – probably right but then, what are they learning? I’m curious as to the age of your friend who didn’t know Oswald was a communist. Someone who perhaps was not alive at the time?
@nobledreamer,
Like you, I attended Catholic schools in the United States from kindergarten through Grade 12. My favorite subjects were always the maths and sciences and I believe that for the most part, I received a good education. I then left the U.S. and attended University in Toronto. Two of my three sons are history, social studies teachers here in Canada. My late husband, who was educated here in Canada, although a businessman, loved history, both Canadian history and world history. Perhaps that love of history is what inspired my sons.
One thing that quickly became apparent to me, after I met my husband, was how limited my education was in the area of world history. In Grade 9, I took a World History course. It covered neanderthal man to World War II. All other history courses were American history – it was like the history of the rest of the world just did not matter. I have always wondered if that is why Americans appear so ‘clueless’ when it comes to knowing facts about the rest of the world.
@nobledreamer, This was about 6 years ago, and we were both in college at the time. To be honest, I didn’t learn in school either that Lee Oswald was a communist, I found out about it on my own later.
Another thing that I didn’t learn in school, and which I’ve never seen anyone mention, is the Jonestown massacre. When I read about it by chance in the internet, I couldn’t believe that the story was true and that no one talks about it. My suspicion is that teachers and the media want to hide these stories because they make communism look horrible.
Now here’s a quick explanation. It’s all about self-perception!
*I also recall that when we lived in Brazil, even though it was during the years of a military dictatorship, we had excellent world news coverage. The Sunday edition of the Estado de Sao Paulo was my favorite. Certain domestic subjects were not published and portions of articles were sometimes censored (what was cut out was replaced with poetry), but the world coverage was excellent.
When I had to make a business trip to the US and read the newspapers here, I felt starved for news on what was going on elsewhere. The topics here was who is running for dog catcher, county sheriff, etc. Not that these were unimportant, but generally people had little feeing for for were interested in what was happening in Argentia, Yugoslavia, China or Sri Lanka.
I was always glad to get back home in time for the Sunday edition of Estado de Sao Paulo, or O Globo in Rio. It was not always that way. I was born in Michigan and had never been outside of that state until after I fininshed college.
@Roger, I can believe that Brazilian school children learn the names of the Brazilian states and their capitals, and maybe the names of the US states. But the US states and their capitals? Are you sure? If so, were they students of private schools?
Sorry, but I could never confirm that the Scandinavian education (neither grade school, middle school, high school, or university) is superior than the education I received. Of course, I got mine in the US suburban public schools and cannot speak for anywhere else.
nor could I confirm that the Scandinavian media (print or tv) is in any way superior
There’s a huge differential in knowledge between urban, sub-urban, and rural schools here. Sub-urban are the best, rural not as good, and finally urban are the worst. It’s a pretty significant problem and the solutions are not easy or cost efficient to implement. One of the biggest problems is when you get in to performance management not only on the district level, but when change granularity and move to the student level, because each student is unique, using a metric like standardized testing doesn’t give us adequate or meaningful information, neither does it tell us our strengths or weaknesses. So the ability to cultivate curriculum’s that are not basically “teaching to the test” have proven harder and harder especially for urban schools, with suburban districts we have the money and the resources to be able to do more enriching activities and lessons, while urban districts just don’t have that luxury also a huge factor is cultural, and family lives which can be drastically different depending on the locale of the district.
All children are still taught each US state and its capital cities, whether there is retention or not is up to a whole host of factors but mainly relates to whether the student finds the information worthy of being kept around. Comparing US students to Chinese students is ludicrous I don’t think anyone thinks we should emulate that Chinese system.
As for the topic you have to remember we have NY on one end, LA on the other, and DC also making news, it’s hard for foreign events or information to break through all the noise and stuff coming out of the two ends and then add DC in to it and it’s just that we have so much going on domestically there’s no time or space left for foreign stuff.
One aspect is that we have an intense focus on local issues to the exclusion of international events. Going back to the founding of the Big 3 television networks our country is so vast and spread out that they didn’t have the financial ability to create a network cross country owned/controlled by a single company. So they had to turn to the affiliate system, affiliates however cannot survive on network programming alone so they need a product which is valuable to people in all the communities across the country so they can sell advertising that in turn means local news, weather, and sports. Along the same lines radio stations are local, newspapers are local, so if an American wants to seek out international news they have to take the time to seek it out, some do, many are just trying to do what you guys all say you do just work hard, you know make a living and care for their family, there’s not enough time in the day for someone to get all the local and national news and then on top add in foreign news. When something major happens our news covers it, the earthquakes, the tsunamis, important foreign elections.
The bottom line though is that the US rightly or wrongly (depending on your politics I guess,) and either through no fault of its own or entirely by its own volition (mostly the latter because one of our major exports is cultural product, entertainment, and media) is in the spotlight, other nations will know more about the US precisely because of this, but then to expect an American to know everything even minute things like the name of prime ministers, or the sub-national entities of every other country on the Earth is asking a little much of just normal humans. It’s fantastic that each Brazilian child learns each US state, but do they also learn the states of Australia, the provinces of Canada, the departments of France, the states of Germany? of course not, because that’s just too much information that would have absolutely no use in life, the same way as it would be for an American to learn the name of each state in Brazil, the name of each department of France, each canton in Switzerland, I know a citizen of each of those nations think they are extremely important and that that information should be known by Americans but you have to remember there is 1 United States, and there are way over a hundred other nations it’s just way too much useless info to expect to be crammed in to each of our heads.
TL;dR: There’s a huge difference in educational quality in the US, depending on whether it’s urban, suburban, or rural. Standardized testing doesn’t really reveal education only whether or not they memorized the test. On the topic Americans should take more interest in major global topics but because the US is such a major exporter of media cultural products there will always be in imbalance for one simple fact there is 1 USA, and there 190 other nations. Other nationals think their minutia is extremely important but those nationals always need to keep in mind that each country thinks their info is important and you can’t expect Americans to know everything.
@Tiger
You must be smart-I wasn’t much for math or science once I’d discovered ballet and music. I remember a world history book from grade 5 and I loved it-especially ancient Egypt, etc. My least favorite was US history. In grade 10 I had a history course on South America and what an eye-opener that was! We had a male teacher in an all-girls school (ugh)-a brilliant but almost completely socially inept fellow. He taught us what the US was really doing-supporting dictators, taking disproportionate profits away from countries where US businesses were operating, etc etc. This would have been 1970-71, so Vietnam was front and centre-esp the invasion of Cambodia and the horrid events at Kent State (which I still reflect upon every May 4th . Also going on was Biafra, France conducting nuclear tests in the South Pacific, etc. I think there was quite a rich mix and as far as TV was concerned, news was forever changed by assassination of JFK.
@Shadow Raider -I guess if it happened so long before our friend was born, there wouldn’t be the effect the TV coverage had on my generation. But I can’t imagine it would’t have been taught in school. I don’t quite follow what you mean-wouldn’t they tend to emphasize bad acts of communists as a way to create negative perceptions? I’m not aware that Jonestown was related to communists. Hope I’m not missing something here 😛
@bubblebustin – where on earth did you find that? Really thought-provoking!
US student public education seems generally weak on teaching about the rest of the world even when I was learning there so many years ago. Similarly, US media offers little regarding the rest of the world. I am always starved for Canadian news coverage when I am in the US for any time; there is much wider focus here. Entertainment / instant gratification seem to be valued more than quality of education and excellence of learning. Advertising and selling the next great junk that no one needs takes precedence. Some make it through despite the quality of school systems. Unfortunately, students are not reaching their full potential; education needs to be given greater priority to develop scientists, powerful educators and mentors, innovation — the things important for creating the millions of needed jobs.
http://thebilzerianreport.com/?p=2391
@WhoaItsSteve,
Thanks for taking the time to outline your points so clearly. I can understand there would be a huge difference between urban, suburban and rural schools. I can appreciate what you are saying regarding the difficulties involved in various problems, getting funding and so on. I’m not sure though, that studies (including the ones mentioned in the article), are based upon standardized tests. But 25% of university-bound students could not name the Pacific ocean? That’s pretty serious.
Why do you think it is ludicrous to compare US/Chinese students? They clearly are doing something better that we (Canada included) could learn from. Not only are they superior in school, they are always way ahead as musicians (Western Classical), gynmasts, etc. Ditto for India, at least in terms of education. Looking at what they are doing is not equivalent to adopting their system.
Canada is even more vast and spread out than the US with only 35 million people. Yet there is a huge emphasis on US news as well as international news along with local. While not an ideal news source perhaps, CNN certainly covers international news. I think it has to do with a different perception; I can quite remember feeling that the USA was the best and most important place on earth. It was not until I lived abroad and also traveled a bit, that I came to understand other people in the world had a point of view that was just as important. Are you aware that a major point of contention for Canadians is that they object to the amount of American content on our media? Even in US, PBS was a response to the frustration based upon the content of much of the network programming. I remember, PBS came about when I was in grade 7 and it was really different. As a performing artist in later years, I was really grateful for PBS.
I don’t think the issue is that one expects a US person to know minutia of other countries but rather, to have some idea that the rest of the world is also part of the picture and the US is part of that picture not the whole picture. How could anyone not know where Afghanistan is? Especially given how many US soldiers have died there. To not know where Israel is on a map-that is basic geography. And what Canada means besides fighting together in the World Wars and that most of us speak English?
I am not into dissing the US-it used to drive me crazy to deal with this sort of thinking when I first came because I took it personally. After 30 years, I ignore the part that is meant in a mean way but I listen to the parts that matter.
@Steve
meant to include this but forgot-Have you seen this on The Newsroom?
@nobledreamer, I have the impression that most teachers and journalists are leftists, and that many of them sympathize with socialism or communism. Therefore, they probably don’t like talking about horrible results of these political systems.
Jim Jones was a member of the US Communist Party. He called his cult “apostolic socialism”, claimed that the members of his community were the “purest communists” of all, and he often mentioned “revolution”. The whole community of Jonestown was clearly an implementation of extreme communism. Jones chose Guyana because the country favored socialism at the time. In the end, the community considered moving to the Soviet Union before deciding on mass suicide. The leaders of the community wrote wills leaving everything they had to the government of the Soviet Union.
You wrote that you are not aware of the communist connection to Jonestown, so I guess the media hid these facts, just like teachers today hide the fact that Lee Oswald was a communist. Since the “reliable” sources don’t mention these things, people who are not aware often don’t believe it when someone states them.
Dear All,
On this same note, I was extremely shocked to listen to a recent Podcast:
http://www.ricksteves.com/radio/protected/descriptions.cfm?showID=413
Rick Steves interviewed three Americans living in Europe. A specific question was asked by a caller regarding taxes. The American living in Spain basically said “you don’t have to pay taxes in the U.S. as long as you are paying taxes in Spain”.
Here you had a radio show with three U.S. citizens, all of whom were living in Europe and none of them mentioned the fact that U.S. citizens indeed have unique reporting and tax requirements.
Many people are clueless indeed even those who listen to Podcasts about European Travel.
*
*@Mooley, I agree that it’s mind-boggling how unaware even expats are of their continued tax and reporting/filing obligations to the US. But to be fair, it’s only been fairly recently that the IRS and Fincen have clamped down on US citizens abroad. It’s why I had been merely filing nominal tax returns until I accidently discovered all the fbar and ovdi and pfic issues on the internet in March 2011…it was my omigod moment.
I had been declaring my worldwide income on my UK tax return and had assumed that would be good enough since there were information sharing agreements, plus I naively believed that I was protected by the tax treaties. I’d never heard of the saving clause.
It almost seemed like entrapment. Caveat emptor!
But back to topic, as it was only since about 2008 that the US has got so strict about filing and reporting, it thus seems more understandable that many still aren’t aware. It will be interesting to see if expat audits skyrocket after fatca takes full effect. I still suspect though that the IRS will concentrate on egregarious cases.
@Shadow Raider
I had no idea about the communism angle. That might not be the fault of media but rather, due to my focus on that situation only from the “cult” focus. I might not have paid enough attention. Thanks for bringing me up to speed on this.
@ Mooley,
They just haven’t had the OMG moment yet. Likely due to the extremely poor job the IRS has done getting the message out about filing taxes. Plus the unforgiveable action of reviving FBAR after 40 years of virtual non-enforcement. Or should I say, misapplying FBAR as well as reviving it?
Many of us here did not know anything until the close of the first 2011 OVDI.
@Mooley, He overly simplified the situation, did not mention reports of assets, and mixed the foreign tax credit with the foreign earned income exclusion. But he did say that you still have to file taxes, he just made it sound very easy, which is far from the truth.
yes, many average americans are clueless about the world surrounding them. Where it really gets bad is when the “elite” is no better. What’s more redneck than a Carl Levin or a Chuck Grassley, to name only two? this is a very serious problem for expats, for the US and for the world that people like that can be in a position of power.
Mona, we have to obey the laws where we live i.e., pay taxes where we live. I don’t care whatever threats the US spews, I’m not going to break the law here and run the risk of going to jail just to appease the Slave Overlord in the US. Hopefully my citizenship paperwork will get moving!!
Roger, to be fair, the school system here in Brazil is atrocious, especially public schools. Private seems only slightly better. Things may have worsened from some years ago when you were here. Still, most Brazilians I know have a notion or concept about US states. For sure, knowledge of Geography is 100x what it is in the US. IMO, Americans are dunces in this area because they wear the “We’re the Greatest Country on the Planet” blinders. They are so filled with arrogance and pride that they can’t see outside of their own borders. Well, you know Brazil and probably why people here are almost forced to be humble I could go on for days about cultural differences, but way beyond the scope of this site.
*@Shadow, I also mixed up the ftc with the feie . I regret it so much because I’ll have to wait till at least mid 2016 before the six year sol’s (rather than 3 due to new fatca laws regarding foreign income)will have run for the amended returns. While I have trust in my accountant that she could represent me in the case of an audit, it is still nerve-wracking to have to live with the uncertainty for so long..
@Geeze, while I hate the situation that Congress has created for us via the IRS, I nonetheless feel that as a US citizen, that I should have kept more aware of my filing and reporting responsibilities. In the UK, they still perceive my dominant citizenship to be my US citizenship because they have a notion of tax domicile. I am thus deemed ‘tax resident’ in the UK but still tax-domiciled in the US.
It feels almost like entrapment but blame myself for having been so complacent up till last year. It was naive of me. And because my situation is fraught with convoluted anomalies, I believe that I’m too entangled to even consider renouncing at this point. Would only have been realistically possible if I’d relinquished right after getting British citizenship (had I done so before I’d inadvertedly created such a complicated situation for myself). I genuinely fear that to do so now, especially with many complicated years still open for possible audit would be too risky..too many red flags. Such is life, plus don’t want my niece/nephews to be screwed out of an inheritance.
*Geeez, it has been 35 years since I left Brazil and I do suspect that most of the young people I knew there were private-school eductated. Private schools abounded everywhere. But it was my distinct impression that generlly the world view of just about everybody was far broader than the average educated person in the US.
One of my projects in sellling US-made telecommunications products involved a proposal we had made to Telepar, the telephone company controlled by the state of Parana which provided local and long distance service to all but just a couple of cities in that state where there were municipally-owned systems. We were proposing a massive modernization using technology never seen in Brazil before.
I traveled to the US with 3 top management persons from Telepar for them to see the kinds of equipment working we were proposing. None of the 3 had never visited the US before, but they had all studied English in HS and the universithy and were able to function speaking English when we arrived in the US far beyond what I had ever dreamed possible, engaging in question and answer sessions with the people in charge of similar installations we visited in the US. (The most difficult thing for them was adjusting to the very different foods here from what they were accustomed to eating back home.)
What a contrast with a simlar group of Americans who might go to Brazil. They would probaby have first have had to check a map to find where Brazil was located, and they would have required translators in order to be able to communicate, using English, with the people they visited.
Generally you have to drag Americans by the neck for them to study a foreign language and most of them do it to fulfill a school academic requirement to have studied a foeign language, but rarely do the acquire any genuine ability to really communicate in the language they have studied. And as soon as the course is completed the books are closed and put away on the shelf. Contrast this with Brazilians everywhere, from all walks of life, who were studing English, German, Japanese, French, etc. not to just complete some vague language requirement but to prepare themselves to be able to really communicate in an additional language. With many foreign companies in Brazil secretaries wanted to become competent in a foreign language because it opened job opportunities for them. Often non-Americans express linguistic cultural differences by noting that a person who speaks 3 languages is trilingual, 2 languages is bilingual and only one language is American.
A help wanted ad for a bilingual Portuguese-French secretary would produce a multitute of candidates fluent in French who had never set foot in a French speaking country in their whole lives, or engineers for a German company with plenty of new young engineers who speak German.
And in Brazil it was easy to attend movies in other languages produced abroad, usually with Portuguese subtitiles, or sometimes dubbed in Portugiuese and in those days before world-wide TV there were foreign language programs, dubbed or with subtitles, watched by the multitutes who learned a great deal about cultures of very different countries. I remember my wife and I attending a British movie where the characters spoke with such a heavy cockney accent that we just did not understand that my wife wispered to me “thank heavens for the Portuguese subtitiles.” Today visitors from abroad in hotels have access to not only North American but German, British, Italian, Chinese, Italian, French, Argentine, Japanese, etc. TV programs, as I presume cable and satelite TV subscibers do in their homes as well. Cable TV had not arrived yet when we lived there.
All of these factors contribute to Brazilians having a much wider world view that the average American who honestly has little concept, or interest, of what is going on beyond the borders of the US and never has nor never will have a passport and travel to another country.
When we first moved to Brazil our youngest daughter was 4 years old. We enrolled her in a Nursery school that was in the same block where we lived, and soon discovered that they had “put her to work” teaching the other little kids how to speak English. Withing 6 weeks she was also fluent in Portuguse. The reverse would be most likely to happen in the US where the foreign speaking child would quickly learn to not use any of his or her native language words.