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This post is not an attack at a certain class of people. I am not Trying to be better than anybody in anyway.
Why is this happening? Why is a whole class of people being dumbed down? Why can't people critically think let alone find thier own country on the map?
The Media
The Government
Its that simple.
The blame of "America's Stupidity" doesn't fall on Americans themselves. They're people like any other person in this world. There is nothing physical keeping an American from being as smart as any other person, be them: Canadian, German, English, Fren-- Anyway...
It all has to do with how the country is run. With such a focus on Media, Entertainment, and keeping the general populous busy enough to generally keep their noses out of what the government is doing, you get a large, lazy, dumb populous.
Not to mention probability is a huge factor as well. With so many people, you have a bigger chance of getting dumb people, as well as smart people. Which is why so many of both have come out of America.
Again, the American people can't really be blamed. Nor is this every case. We have many Americans, smart Americans, on this board.
But once gain, you can't expect a smart population when you're leadership is only made so out of morbid curiosity.
Agree with everything ExoByte said.
We also have something called "No Child Left Behind" which cuts funding to schools if their students don't perform well on tests. Obviously that's ass backwards, but we've got no way to fix it right now.
I do agree that America has a failing education system. Though I am really getting sick of all this hate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_mkw...eature=related Look at this video... The maker is just showing how any video can be made to make a country look stupid. The real ignorance comes out of the people who dont try to understand another point of view and just mindlessly hate something because of what the media tells them to hate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nazzul
Nazull i did post more than the one video of guys interviewing americans. There's also the education system. And like i said I'm not posting this to feel superior over anyone. I am concerned that the most powerfull nation in the world can't educate itself properly, or critically think. I think if people were smarter and had the right opportunities, we'd have less arrogance, and wars based on BS.
You want a war based on BS? Take India and Pakistan.
I don't think America is anywhere near alone in these sorts of things. There are some really serious issues in the States though that go far beyond dumb people in the streets.. health care, for instance.
I think dumb people are a serious issue. If people weren't so poorly educated and self aware, they wouldn't have let federal governments ruin the health care system. What about the issue of Private banks making the US currency?
The government doesn't print the money, Private Banks do. Yet most people still pay income tax because they don't understand how corrupt the monetary system is. Stipidity, Ignorance, and laziness are the very things that keep humankind in the stone age.
You know, I've thought about it, and I honestly have no clue why the american populace comes off as so lowbrow. It's kind of like why violent crime rates in the US are so high. Sure, there are a few factors here and there that influence the matter, but I can't think of any determining reason.
Maybe this thread can bring up some answers...
Personally I believe money CAN help education. How? By paying teachers more, I think. If teachers were paid a lot more, teaching would be a competitive profession that people actually desire and would work hard for. Or if they aren't going to pay them more, at least give them major tax cuts. I don't exactly understand the point of giving the teachers government money, and then taxing them on that money.
Secondly, people need to take a long, hard look on how children are taught. Just like the monopoly thing, teachers often have long, drawn out analogies or experiments to demonstrate very simple concepts. For example, in my biology class we did some thing where we put an egg in colored water to see how it absorbs the molecules. We don't need to spend 2 days doing an experiment where we can simply be informed of something in about 30 seconds. We often sacrifice actual learning for "fun" activities which are completely useless. Though nice on occassion, sometimes they just need to feed us information. I have a teacher who teaches us as if we were 5th graders, and it is ridiculous. Teachers should teach with the predisposition that the children are at a certain level of maturity both emotionally and intellectually.
Lastly, the whole government philosophy toward education is, as someone so aptly put it, "ass backwards." As Obama once pointed out, currently a school that has 50% of its students failing one year, and 25% of its students failing the next year is deemed a "failure." No Child Left Behind is terrible, and it is essentially saying "Let's be as strong as our weakest link." I have taken classes where if someone is having trouble, they fail or do poorly. To be honest, this is how it should be. No reason to explain it to us like children because some don't understand it. Some children just need to be left behind. That is the natural order of things. If we don't let some children left behind, then everybody will be left behind.
These things lead to dysfunction in the U.S.:
- welfare system that encourages laziness and the mass reproduction of the lazy and dysfunctional
- the dumbass war on drugs, which makes it very profitable to be a thug and puts fathers in prison (where they can't raise their kids) for taking advantage of that profit opportunity
- socialist public education system (That video does not apply to our private education system. Not even close.)
Our public education system does not lack money. It lacks the competition element necessary to counter the other factors I listed.
This is the sort of thing educated Americans do...
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedst...llo11/flag.jpg
*American populace looks on*
"Dat waz FAKED!!!"
:lol:
I don't beleive the moon landing every happend. srry try harder.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Dammit, how did you find out? Was it those meddling kids? :mad:Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Everyone should watch the entire video before saying anything about it. Seems like what they are saying is pretty much true from what I have seen. People who think you can throw money and problems to make them go away are morons. Thats why we have a huge debt and thats why the money of our value is dropping like a rock.
welll really its not a matter of throwing money at things its a matter of using the money wisely. We all know if money isn't spent on the problem it wont go away but that said money on its own wont make it go away. What it takes is good planning and good leadership and ofcourse the right amount of money :p
So in short its not the money its how you use it.
Was the Mars Rover mission faked too?Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonoverlord
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/pr...257F_th418.jpg
In a word yes. Ofcourse im not serious ever heard of sarcasm..Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
JESUS CHRIST (no offense Jesus)
These are the people voting for Hilary!!!!!!!!!
I cant believe the ignorance our country. :s
No one in the whole United States should answered one of those questions wrong.
I blame them and only them. Read a F*CKING DAMN BOOK!
As for the schools, I think 90% (guess lol) of the problem, is the parents fault. Think about it, none of the kids have any respect for grown-ups, or anyone for that matter. So how are they learn from someone they're not listening to? They don't. And that's the parents fault for not teaching their children basic etiquette.
You give the schools way to much credit. While parents are not without blame, the schools are clearly at fault.
Thats an insane part of the video when they were talking about the buildings they made just to hold criminal teachers who are sex offenders and stuff. They can't fire them so they continue to pay them and they just show up to work and do nothing for the entire day then accept a paycheck.
:rolllaugh:Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonoverlord
Please give me another good laugh by claiming that Microsoft is an illusion. Are light bulbs really hoaxes too? :laugh:
Well I find them stupid by criticising the other countries like Britain or European countries when they seem to be much stable countries. Hey it's only my opinion, though.
Um, UM, I think dragon overloard was kidding.
Nope. Afraid not.Quote:
Originally Posted by wasup
Uhm... (near) invisible font...
Actually it was UM, i wrote half of the message in white letters that you cant see try highlighting my message and seeing the part i left out of sight.
Old man ur eyes are failing u!
lol, fun stuff in this thread. How stupid those people were was VERY funny, but I think it is pretty lame to push the blame off on the education system. Yes I could answer all of those questions, yes I went through a public school (a very small one) and Im currently demolishing all math and science courses in my path to being a certified electrical engineer. Just providing a counter point....
ah, dragonlord, dont be too hard on old UM. He has had to fight off many a moon conspiriter. Im sure he has something like war veteran's always being jumpy around loud noises and such.
Whats wrong with blamming the educational system? Its job is to teach, if it doesn't teach its their fault. If your going to blame anyone, it should be them. Theres more than enough blame to go around here. We can blame congress as well.
Obviously all school isn't bad. I am sure everyone had good teachers and bad teachers. You learn from the good ones, and hopefully it makes up for the bad ones which we shouldn't have in the first place.
I have to say most of the questions in there are stuff I never learned from school but I picked up on my own however. I have to say the vast majority of them I learned from talking to people, looking stuff up on the internet, or watching tv and movies.
So really there are two issues here. First a lot of people are poorly educated, and that is a big problem and our school system needs to improve in that. The other issue is that people are not paying attention to anything around them and they fail to pick up basic everyday knowledge that everyone should know.
And America is also one of the most religous country in the world.
The middle east doesn't count except Israel.
I read somewhere that the use comes in secound after.....India!Quote:
Originally Posted by Seismosaur
I watched the first video in its entirety, and I have to agree with everything that was said.
I'm lucky enough to be in a phenomenal public high school right now (though I'm still bored and could get much more out of it with more personalized treatment... whatever). I can't imagine being stuck in a shitty public school.
My mother is a math teacher, and so I get a lot of 'behind-the-scenes' talk about other teachers. I know a good handful of teachers that everyone knows are burnt out, overly aggressive, incompetent, or just generally stupid, and yet are not at risk of being fired because of tenure.
It's really a stupid concept, and these teacher's unions have gone way too far.
I'm not sure just how much public education is to blame, I mean the adult population doesn't seem much smarter than the children. Unless crappy education in the US has been going on since the 60s...
Once somebody expresses support for suicide terrorism, I never assume anything they say is too absurd to be taken seriously. Plus, Dragon said this about the moon landing conspiracy video...Quote:
Originally Posted by tkdyo
So I took him seriously when he said the moon landing never happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonoverlord
I should have mentioned that I went to public schools for most of my grade schooling. Two of the schools were very good, but two of them were major jokes. Overall, the public school system would be much better if the schools competed with each other for students and earned a certain amount of money per student. I will also add that even at the worst schools, students can be very educated when they decide they really want to be. School is what a student makes of it, but in most cases, students will make little of school if the teachers are not pushing them the right way.
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/pr...257F_th418.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
We're talking about these people, not the 0,001% of americans who hold a degree in rocket science.
ah, UM. Im not trying to poke fun at you, Im actually quite happy that you try to educate the people who think those moon landings are fake, and doing a good job of dispelling other theories on here.
Alric. Im not saying the educational system has no part in this failure, however I think more personal responsibilities should be given to many of the students who are just plain lazy. However, I agree that something needs to be done about tenure, because it is ridiculous how some terrible teachers can stay in the school just because of that
Your statement was much more general than that, and the Mars Rover is only one example among a great many major accomplishments of Americans. We dominate world business, technology, economics, entertainment, and military power, and it is not exactly because of the cherry picked imbeciles in that video. I'm sure I could find some ditch diggers and janitors in Canada who can't name a country that starts with C. Go to an American college campus with a video camera and see how much luck you have making a video like that. You will have to interview the right cafeteria workers. It is amazing how hard yet pitifully people try to downgrade our intelligence when we dominate the world in so many ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Ya well the the video the 9 minutes i saw atleast did make very good points and raised important questions about the moon landing UM. Are you denying that? They indeed did raise good questions. Im not saying the Moon landing never happend just that its a possibility it never happend man. The topic is open to debate.
Take it easy your working yourself up about nothing. All of a sudden i say "only in america" and you seem to take it personally. Jeeze.
On the school issue i think you got a good idea going there.
I just love to debate, and I think America haters have a lot to learn... or admit. You did not catch my attention by saying, "Only in America." You caught my attention before that by openly supporting suicide terrorism. Your "only in America" comment just had me making a crack about suicide bombers, which had you expressing more support for suicide bombers and talking about how they are supposedly very effective. That is when I decided to try much harder to get you to be specific.Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonoverlord
I thought the moon landing video was a bunch of assertion and was not backed up by any kind of secondary evidence, which made it very weak. It was just moon landing footage and a woman's voice saying things and just expecting us to believe everything she said. I could make a video and use my voice to make a bunch of wild claims about what the film proves. It would not be difficult. I could talk over an old film of a tennis match and say, "That kind of tennis racket was not invented until ten years later. This proves that aliens from the future visited John McEnroe." That type of video proves nothing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Watch the end of that video for an added laugh (that's part 1 of 5 by the way, filmed in 2000).
The way I see it, it's like Americans are single-minded. They're very focused on (and usually good at) what they do, and pretty much ignore anything that doesn't directly concern them.
For me, this isn't about trying to slander the States, it's about exposing how little America pays attention to the world it watches over. It's true that the US dominates the world in many ways, yet it's scary how its people know next to nothing about it.
Have you ever lived here? I don't know where you are getting that. Those videos were set up for entertainment and do not reflect realistic samples. Jay Leno makes videos like that too, and he shows them on his extremely popular late night comedy show. Do you know why his enormous audience thinks the videos are hilarious? Because they know the answers to the questions and think the dumb responses are very unusual and surprising. I would be surprised if a single American who has viewed this thread has watched the videos and gone, "Duh, what's so dumb about not knowing that stuff?" You must be watching too much Jerry Springer or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
I've been to the US many times, I've met many americans, I see your media every day, I've seen surveys and statistics, and more often than not, I get a taste of the american "we are so great" attitude.
I can only go by what I have seen... and what the US projects.
Have you met many Americans who are opinionated on the ;):lol:;) Russian presence in Saskatchewan? Have you seen a lot of Americans saying things like that on our news programs? That was some very unusual stuff in those videos. What did not get shown were the intelligent answers that would have taken the fun out of the video. We have no way of knowing how many there were. It is not like that guy showed up at Mount Rushmore and downtown Montgomery, Arkansas and other places with a camera and made an unedited live video. It wouldn't take that long to find a Parisian who is going to act like he has an opinion on the Malaysian invasion of Paraguay if a fake news man talks about it like it's real.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Ok thanks for clarifying that. I disagree with your opinion on teh video but for me to counter your argument i would have to watch the video again and honestly im not passionate about that issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
I think we are falling a little off topic here guys.
And, as far as the "america is the greatest attitude" I have been to Taiwan, Korea, Germany and Japan. In every one of them you meet people who think their country is the best and that everyone else is doing something wrong. I think it is pretty lame to characterize any one nation as this when all of them have people who think this way.
That's true, BUT, I have noticed that one thing said at the beginning of the video is true, Americans do tend to try and elaborate about subjects they know nothing about, rather than just admit ignorance on the matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
If it's really not as bad as all the videos and stuff portray (hopefully most americans know how many sides a triangle has), then all the better; but you should really try and improve your outgoing image.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
So those people in the video who were interviewed in Montgomery, Arkansas are more like that than the typical people who would have been interviewed for such a video in, say, London or Tokyo?
I wouldn't know, having been exposed far less to people from those places. One thing's for sure though, those regions don't exude a "stupid vibe". I think the general somewhat obnoxious attitude attributed to Americans is what differentiates them from other nations though. It's easier to pick on the loud annoying ones (no offense).Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
:rolllaugh: Spartiate, you just got nailed. I even gave you two chances to pass the test. The people in the video were not in Montogmery, Arkansas. They were in the capital city, where the capitol building is and where the governor lives and works. The capital of Arkansas is not Montgomery. It is Little Rock. Montgomery is the capital of Alabama. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Heh, fine then :P. Although it's not like you asked me "what is the capital of Arkansas", because I really wasn't paying attention to place names while casually reading through stuff here at 2 am; I just read "Are the Americans interviewed any different to typical people you would interview in England or Japan". But I'll let you have your fun...Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
You have no choice. :chuckle:Quote:
Originally Posted by Spartiate
Don't push it :P. It's bad enough I think I'm supposed to know these things...Quote:
Originally Posted by Universal Mind
Imagine passively tricking an American by putting "Moncton, PEI" in a sentence and then hanging it over his head when he doesn't say anything. I'd expect a "WTF is PEI?"
haha, I might expect a "you mean PIE? Oh man, Im hungry" after it :D
Well forgetting about the two that are supposed to be funny. The first video up was actually a serious one that many a lot of good points.
Whose up for one of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies...:evil:
Sorry Jeff, but Im a vegetarian.