# Am Amurikans dumbererer **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 20, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715 "2009-02-20T14:33:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/81 "2009-02-24T07:00:45Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Believe me, you do _not_ want to go south past Mexico if you can avoid it, unless you’re taking a plane to South America (and not always there). It’s… just not a good idea. > > Aside from which, the idea that you would drive there is insane. That’s be likely casually hopping in a car in Madrid to get to Moscow. Except the L.A. to Panama City run is far more likely to take you into a civil war, pitch you over the side of a mountain from an ill-maintained road, run you into robbers or smuggler gangs in remote areas, take you far from hotels, wi-fi, and other amenities travelers expect, and so on. Yeah, that’s so much like like a quick trip from Amsterdam to Rome I wouldn’t know which it was without my GPS. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/82 "2009-02-24T09:46:05Z")
But we are talking about the possibilities from the United States. Besides, there are places in the United States that are just as creepy. Where’s your spirit of adventure? I had a cousin who swam the length of the Panama Canal. It’s true that he died at sea later on a most unfortunate vessel. But he had fun _until then_. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/83 "2009-02-24T10:48:47Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > I think it’s Vaclav Klaus, the Czech prez now heading the EU, who’s known as a free-market anti-environmentalist loudmouth. (Might have once been Marxist, though…) Klaus worked as an economist during communism but was known for his opposition to Marxist economic thought. Also, he’s not racist or anti-semitic, and he was elected some years ago, and not by any electorate but by the Czech Parliament. I don’t think he’d qualify. Still I sure would like to know who the hell **Shydee** is referring to. ---
**Author:** ![Winsling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Winsling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winsling)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/84 "2009-02-24T18:55:46Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Klaus worked as an economist during communism but was known for his opposition to Marxist economic thought. Also, he’s not racist or anti-semitic, and he was elected some years ago, and not by any electorate but by the Czech Parliament. I don’t think he’d qualify. Still I sure would like to know who the hell **Shydee** is referring to. I strongly suspect he’s referring to Obama. I’m basing that more on the “doesn’t give me much hope” more than any characteristics he described. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/85 "2009-02-24T19:14:10Z")
Yeah, even a Double-Strength Konservative Kool-Aid drinker wouldn’t claim that a highly articulate former president of the Harvard Law Review had “the IQ of a walnut.” ---
**Author:** ![Winsling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Winsling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winsling)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/86 "2009-02-24T19:51:37Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Yeah, even a Double-Strength Konservative Kool-Aid drinker wouldn’t claim that a highly articulate former president of the Harvard Law Review had “the IQ of a walnut.” Betcha a dollar? ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/87 "2009-02-24T19:57:55Z")
I have a hard time with the idea that Europeans are measureably, consistently more intelligent than Americans. In general, creatures are intelligent as they need to be to survive their daily lives, and to argue that Europeans have greater intelligence — greater learning capacity, more brainpower — suggests that there has been a generations-long evolutionary pressure in favor of intelligence _only_ in Europe and not in America. I don’t see it. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/88 "2009-02-24T20:42:45Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Country style steak with creamed potatoes and gravy. Green beans and corn cooked with pork fat. Breaded fried yellow squash. Cornbread and biscuits. Tall glass of ice cold tea. A heaping pile of banana pudding topped with meringue. Mmm… And a huge side of Lipitor. Hmmm… ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/89 "2009-02-24T21:01:39Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Country style steak with creamed potatoes and gravy. Green beans and corn cooked with pork fat. Breaded fried yellow squash. Cornbread and biscuits. Tall glass of ice cold tea. A heaping pile of banana pudding topped with meringue. Mmm… You mean \*Tall glass of ice cold \*\*\*sweet \*\*_tea_, that stuff is crack in a glass, I swear. 😛 But look at British or German cuisine. I mean, your Southern menu there has two veggies, not just overcooked peas. blechh ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2009, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/90 "2009-02-25T17:48:25Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Except the L.A. to Panama City run is far more likely to take you into a civil war, pitch you over the side of a mountain from an ill-maintained road, run you into robbers or smuggler gangs in remote areas, take you far from hotels, wi-fi, and other amenities travelers expect, and so on. Yeah, that’s so much like like a quick trip from Amsterdam to Rome I wouldn’t know which it was without my GPS. Let me explain Spectre’s and my comments here: nations past Mexico tend to be highly unstable, with high crime, lots of violence, and casual brutality or kidnappings of foreigners. You couldn’t pay me to visit some of those nations. I’m sure they have a lot of interesting culture… but it’s not worth it. \*Anecdote: one of my Business teachers went to A Certain South American City. He was warned that, on the hour-long drive from the mountain-plateau airport to the city down below (near the coast), they might be stopped by kidnappers. If they wore shoes, they were right-wing kidnappers, and it was OK because they’d send money and he’d be released. If they didn’t have shoes, they were leftist guerrillas and it would get messier. And he was _never_ to leave his hotel except to get into the car which came to pick him up, and only after verifying the driver’s identity. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2009, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/91 "2009-02-26T04:05:03Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Let me explain Spectre’s and my comments here: nations past Mexico tend to be highly unstable, with high crime, lots of violence, and casual brutality or kidnappings of foreigners. You couldn’t pay me to visit some of those nations. I’m sure they have a lot of interesting culture… but it’s not worth it. > > \*Anecdote: one of my Business teachers went to A Certain South American City. He was warned that, on the hour-long drive from the mountain-plateau airport to the city down below (near the coast), they might be stopped by kidnappers. If they wore shoes, they were right-wing kidnappers, and it was OK because they’d send money and he’d be released. If they didn’t have shoes, they were leftist guerrillas and it would get messier. And he was _never_ to leave his hotel except to get into the car which came to pick him up, and only after verifying the driver’s identity. In the 1980s I believe it was, David Letterman came up with this one gag that involved having Larry “Bud” Melman drive to Central America – I _think_ the Panama Canal was his destination – and he would report in for each show. It seemed to get pretty hairy even before he left Mexico. I don’t remember how far he actually got, but the US Embassy in one country warned him not to go further, and Melman himself ended up pleading on the phone to Letterman to bring him back after a couple of scary incidents, which he did. I met a guy from California who with his father drove a school bus packed with medical supplies all the way from California to Nicaragua, also in the 1980s. He said at the Guatamalan government’s insistence, an armed soldier rode shot gun the entire segment through that country. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/92 "2009-02-26T21:40:24Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Are Europeans smarter than Americans? No, of course not. > > But a lot of Europeans like to think so, and interestingly, a lot of AMERICANS like to think so, too! > > Why would they think that? Well, I see TWO big reasons. > > PART I: > > I suspect a big part of the reason is the type of culture each side gets to see from the other side of the pond. That is, what do Americans get to see of European culture, and what do Europeans get to see of American culture? > > When you look at it that way, well, no wonder Americans think more highly of Europe than Europeans think of America! The “culture” we export tends to be aimed at a mass audience- fast food, lowbrow movies, et al. Hence, Europeans think we’re the land of Disney, Jim Carrey, Britney Spears, and McDonald’s. There’s plenty of high culture in America, but that’s not what Euros get to see, for the most part. They get to see the popular crap, and may assume that’s ALL we have to offer. > > Meanwhile, only a small amount of European culture makes its way to the USA, and most of it tends to be highbrow and sophisticated. THAT leads a lot of Americans to assume the Euros as a whole must be more sophisticated. > > Pssst… they’re not! European television has some wonderful stuff that you won’t often see here, but it ALSO has a host of stupid, embarrassing shows that make Jerry Springer look like “Masterpiece Theatre.” > > And the avant garde French films you see at the downtown art-house cinema may be wonderful, but they are NOT typical of what ordinary French folks are watching. > > - > > Part II: > > Europeans think they’re smarter than Americans because THEY know a lot about the USA, while most of us Yanks know precious little about Europe. > > There’s much truth to that. But… > > First, a huge percentage of what Europeans think they know about the USA is absurdly wrong. > > Second, what do they expect? Historically, powerful nations have always attracted more interest and attention than weaker nations. We have been the most important nation in the world (militarily, economically and culturally) since the 1940s, and for that reason, people around the world have HAD to pay a lot of attention to us. It’s a safe bet that few Europeans knew or cared much about us in, say, 1840! And why WOULD they? We were a minor nation! In those days, Americans undoubtedly paid far more attention to England and France than they paid to us, and that’s only natural! > > Will we ALWAYS be the most important nation on Earth? Who knows? We may be passed out by. Let’s say China emerges as THE economic, cultural and military supwerpower. If that happens, Europeans will pay a lot more attention to the Chinese than to us, and then Europeans will be as ignorant about the USA as Americans are about Europe. > > Then BOTH sides will be equally “dumb,” and it won’t matter any more. The other issue has to do with education. America is the land of the free, all men are created equal. It is considered inappropriate for the last 40 years or so to relegate people to social strata - “you’re too dumb to be a college prof, here. take auto mechanics instead”. Many European countries have systems that stratify you (based on performance) into university or industrial training, trade apprenticeships, etc - a early as 12 years old. Americans seem to find something offensive in telling the dumb ones “learn to dig ditches”. As a result, our system holds back not so much the smartest, as they will succeed anyway - but the middle-smart type and the lazy. They learn to do only what they need to get by, and our system has been progressively dumbed down until the dumb ones have to try to fail. It seems that telling them they can’t find Madagascar, or Iraq, or the USA on a map somehow hurts their self-esteem. So over there, the smart ones learn something, know they’re smart, and know that Americans don’t seem to be educated. Then there’s the whole debate about whether smart people are held in high esteem in the USA. Egghead? Geek? Just because they gave us the bomb, the moon, and the world, why should they get rich ahead of some comb-over real estate hype tyccoon or a bouncy movie star? The smaller European countries seem to regard their smart people and artists as part of their cultural heritage, like their language. It’s what makes them better that the pinheads 100 miles away in the next country, and justifies holding on to their language and maybe marching over and taking the pinheads’ territory. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2009, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/93 "2009-02-26T21:49:25Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There is some truth to what he said. You will find conservatives deriding things like the “liberal media” and “elitist intellectuals” and “left-wing college professors” and “over-privileged college students” and “feminazi writers” and “radical artists” and all the other stereotypes that “attack American values”. If you’re bored some day, try to find Harlan Ellison’s rant (in The Glass Teat or in The Other Glass Teat) about anti-intellectualism in American popular culture. it dates to the days of the TV cigarette commercial - “whaddaya want? Good grammar or good taste?”. Harlan Ellison can be as devastatingly biting as Cecil, but without an ounce of humor. The rant has nothing to do with left or right, he was mainly criticising Hollywood and American culture generally. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/94 "2009-02-26T22:24:15Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Americans seem to find something offensive in telling the dumb ones “learn to dig ditches”. How do you reliably tell who is “dumb” and who just comes from an underprivileged background? Maybe that “dumb kid” just has a single working parent who doesn’t have any time to spend with him. Or maybe he’s dyslexic. Are you really prepared to give up on a kid and relegate him to ditch-digging after a test or two and a few bad grades? I’ll bet that no matter how dumb some son of royalty was, few of them were relegated to “ditch digging” in school. Einstein failed a school entrance exam, maybe he should have stuck to digging ditches.:dubious: > **[Albert Einstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Youth_and_schooling)** > > Albert Einstein\[a\] (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric e Bor... ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/95 "2009-02-27T00:38:53Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > How do you reliably tell who is “dumb” and who just comes from an underprivileged background? This is indeed a serious problem with European schooling. Even here in America, my high school guidance counselor believed I shouldn’t be taking AP English… because I didn’t know how to write an essay. Well, surprise, surprise, that was because their required essay format was not something learned in other regions. So to them, I obviously didn’t know some basic material. I thought (and today, know for a fact) that they were testing the wrong knowledge and skill. In fact, their required format was not even an essay format: it was a legal argument format! And it turns out, I can write awesome essays in real life. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/96 "2009-02-27T18:08:20Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > If you live in France, you can choose between English, German, Dutch, Italian, or Spanish and hve a good chance of using it regularly. If you live in the United States, you can choose French, Spanish, Japanese, or whatnot and you’re probably never going to have a chance to use it. If you do wind up needing to speak another language, it will probably be one you never learned anyhow. The use of this argument (in similar words) really baffles me. It might have been true 20 years ago, when travelling to the Norway to speak Norwegian for an American was expensive. But today, with the internet offering you native-language sites, with DVDs coming in a variety of dubbed and subtitled languages, with original language radio and TV segments available over internet, it’s easier than ever before to practice speaking a language even if you are in Podunk, Indiana. If you live in New York or LA, it’s of course even easier, because there will be either immigrants or tourists around speaking whatever language you have learned/are trying to learn. The question isn’t “I don’t need to learn \ because everybody speaks English”, it’s (as has been pointed out already) that learning a new language will develop parts of your brain, enable you to look at your own grammar and native language in a different light, and learning about a different culture will open your worldview a bit. I wondered a bit when Cecil cited the percentages for how many Americans finish college, compared to Europeans. From a German perspective, we don’t have college, we only have Universities (and for practical jobs, Universities of applied science = Fachhochschulenn, which are structured more school-like). But every pupil who goes to Advanced High School (Gymnasium), which finishes with the Abitur (the only entrance exam necessary to enter University) has the last two years Kollegstufe (named, from what I’ve heard, because it’s modelled on the college system). The pupil can choose his subjects from certain groups, with two majors, and certain minimum requirements. So was Cecil comparing the percentage of Europeans who finish advanced High School, or who finish University, to the Americans who finish college? Also, while it’s sadly true that children of lower social classes get channelled more in the lower High School in Germany, I think that social stratifiying is stronger in the US, given that the budget of a school depends on the tax the parents in the neighborhood pay, so that poor parents= poor school, no equipment or good teachers, rich parents = rich school, good teachers, good equipment; which seems to me far more unfair than the german system where all taxes go into one pool and the school funds are distributed equally. Additionally, all schools, no matter the neighborhood, have the same set of minimum standards. So people don’t usually go to college and finish still believing in creation, as apparently happens in many cases. (Or finish High School to continue to university never having heard of evolution until then). ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/97 "2009-02-27T19:04:03Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > The question isn’t “I don’t need to learn \ because everybody speaks English”, it’s (as has been pointed out already) that learning a new language will develop parts of your brain, enable you to look at your own grammar and native language in a different light, and learning about a different culture will open your worldview a bit. And yet despite the assertion that multi-lingual Europeans must have better-developed brains, the tests in Cecil’s column show only a tiny measurable difference between American IQ and European IQ: > [@Cecil](#): > > They listed the mean IQ of the U.S., France, and Denmark at 98, Germany at 99, the UK and the Netherlands at 100. At the top of their list were Japan, Taiwan, and China at 105, North and South Korea at 106, and Hong Kong and Singapore at 108. You and I might agree in principle that expanding one’s cultural awareness makes you a better person, a more well-rounded individual, a more open-minded thinker, and so forth. It does _not_ appear to affect the IQ in any way that the study was able to measure, given that the difference between 98 and 99 may well be statistical noise. Our choices: 1. The study was somehow flawed and unreliable and we should trust anecdotes over research; or 2. Language and multiculturalism don’t convey as big an intelligence boost as we’d like to think. 3. Our _perception_ of European and American intelligence is in some way flawed. Any or all of the above can be true. In particular, America probably has a wider _spread_ of intelligence, because we have vast (but sparsely populated) tracts of interior rural land that Europe simply lacks. There are plenty of (as we sometimes call it) hicks from the sticks. It is the urban areas along the coastlines where you will find the greatest diversity of races and languages and cultures, the most universities and the most-educated people, the most tolerance, etc. _On average_ we may be the same, like these numbers here: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8 Both series of numbers have the same _average_. But you could also indisputably say that the first list has lower numbers (i.e., Americans are dumber because their list contains lower numbers). ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/98 "2009-02-27T23:01:11Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > How do you reliably tell who is “dumb” and who just comes from an underprivileged background? Maybe that “dumb kid” just has a single working parent who doesn’t have any time to spend with him. Or maybe he’s dyslexic. Are you really prepared to give up on a kid and relegate him to ditch-digging after a test or two and a few bad grades? > > I’ll bet that no matter how dumb some son of royalty was, few of them were relegated to “ditch digging” in school. How do you tell who is “dumb”? First - read Freakonomics; the major indicator of a person’s success in life is the education level of their parents. This isn’t to say that the offspring of the underprivileged will always fail - but generally, yess, they will struggle. Of course, statistics never tell the whole story - based on stats, the average person has one testicle and one breast. But, if you can’t read by grade 6, you _probably_ ain’t never gonna be the next Hemingway, no matter how many bulls you fight. > [@](#): > > I’ll bet that no matter how dumb some son of royalty was, few of them were relegated to “ditch digging” in school. Yes, this is why North America eschews elitism, to one extent - the stratification of society was used to stream the “wrong” people. I’m sure very few blacks were streamed for higher education (heck, for high school) no matter how much promise they showed in the 1950’s. Royalty in Europe, of course, had their own elite schools where the cream of Europe (“thick and rich floaters”) was taught to rise to the top no matter what it took; and nepotism found niches for the less capable. Regardless, it goes back to the euro-abbeys in the middle ages - the more promising of the lowly peons were taken in, given a full education and could rise to be advisors to the kings and princes. Their education system, like the Chinese, still values book learnin’ for its own sake. American universities have scholarships, but no on the scale of the systems that have been in place in Europe to facilitate the education of the brightest. Americans aren’t dumber - just less widely educated. OTOH, read Robert Heinlein’s diatribe in one of his posthumous books about his father’s education; the farmboys of Kentucky who showed promise, could be taught latin by high school, the most promising also Greek ina a one-room schoolhouse; a relative of mine, pushing 75, still has his schoolbooks where they read the Aenid and Virgil in orginal latin in a Pennsylvania school. What do we teach kids today that can compare to that in intensity of knowledge? > [@](#): > > Einstein failed a school entrance exam, maybe he should have stuck to digging ditches.:dubious: > [Albert Einstein - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Youth_and_schooling) This maybe is another good myth for Cecil to tackle. A more in depth look at this that I once read determined that no, Einstein actually did quite well as a child. Apparently, one year during his schooling the area’s marking system was changed to match the country norm (inverted, as I recall) so reading Albert’s list of marks over the years made him appear to go from top to bottom of the heap. Actually he stayed at the top. One person read the marks, made the comment, and it has followed him like a bad internet reference for most of a century - perhaps because it makes such a pleasing moral. ---
**Author:** ![YamatoTwinkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cc9497/32.png) [@YamatoTwinkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YamatoTwinkie)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/99 "2009-02-27T23:36:58Z")
I think [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmLwnSXNpFU&feature=related) “Who wants to be a Millionaire” clip from France should prove that Europe is at least equally as dumb as the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715/100 "2009-02-27T23:58:38Z")
Just exactly how multilingual are Europeans really anyway? I’ve met many who did not speak other than their native language. I bought into the “Europeans speak lots of languages” bit in my younger days and then was astonished when I got to know a German couple in Texas, and the wife said she did not learn English or any other language until an adult and that was only because she was going to the US with her husband. Then tooling around Central Europe on my own, the towns and villages were filled with unilingual people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-amurikans-dumbererer/486715.md?page=6)