Are Americans Less Globally Aware?

Great Debates
1

Whenever I talk with people while traveling overseas or converse with foreigners here in the United States, I am repeatedly struck by how much more informed they usually are about global events and politics. I attribute this to a few things:

  1. Americans are flooded with vast quantities of “fluff” stories by their media outlets.

  2. American media is largely commercial in nature and therefore more subject to the whims of advertisers who do not wish their promotions and extremely controversial material to be juxtaposed.

  3. Many foreign countries have state run media outlets that do not broadcast large scale commercial advertising or extensive entertainment programming.

  4. An ethnocentrically related de-emphasis of external affairs.

  5. Lack of educational focus on world events.

  6. Frequent absence of a second language in the typical household.

  7. A lower priority on the written word as a medium which reduces exposure to foreign based periodicals and publications.

These are some of the reasons I can readily summon to explain the persistent lack of world view I encounter amongst American people. While the denizens of this message board counter this trend, this is not the overall case. I have had people from other nations ask me if I work for the state department after talking with them about affairs in their own country. While a bit more abreast of global politics than some I am by no means an expert on world events. I willingly attribute my own curiosity and taste for international news to one side of my family being emigrants.

Do you feel that Americans are lacking in world view? If so, what do you attribute it to? If not, what contributes to this seemingly pervasive perception by outsiders?

2

I think we are “lacking in world view”. The U.S. is big. Really big. We have Mexico to the south and Canada to the north. European countries are smaller and have more neighbours. Drive a hundred miles from L.A. and you almost get to San Diego. Or you get to Bakersfield or Barstow. Since we don’t have visitors from many countries driving on our roads and interacting with us to a large degree, we tend to forget that there are other countries out there. I see many Canadian and Mexican license plates on cars in the L.A. area, but I’ve never seen a German-licensed car here. (I see “reproduction” German license plates on some Porsches and BMWs, but the rear plate is invariable from California.) We’re just too isolated.

Of course, Australia is isolated as well. But I get the impression they know what’s going on outside of their island/continent. Why? For one thing, they seem to have more progressive vacation rules than we do. They seem to travel more than we do. Maybe they know that they are far away from Europe and the Americas, and to some extent, Asia, and actually seek to keep abreast of the world situation. Plus, they have thier close connection with England.

IMO Americans are exceedingly provincial. We think we have too many other things to think about to pay attention to the rest of the world. And why read the London Times when domestic news readership is (IMO) lacking? (And I’ll admit that I seldom read the newspaper. I have no time in the morning, and I’m usually too busy to read the paper at work. I can get news from NPR and the internet.) Except for the border states, we tend not to think about our trade relations with Canada – let alone Europe and Asia.

But I think the physical isolation is the biggest factor. We are not bordered by several neighbours that have the same standard of living as we have. Canada, of course, is comparable to the U.S.; but that’s only one country and not Belgium, England, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, etc., etc. Some people see Mexico as a nice place to vacation, but do not consider it a “modern” country.

In addition, Americans do not save as much money as some other people. We like to get the bigger teevee, the newer car, the better house… Traveling is farther down on the list; and then the destinations are likely to be places like Hawaii or Mexico. (Not that zillions of Americans don’t go to Europe – just that it seems Mexico and Hawaii are the more popular vacation spots.) Most Americans only get two or three weeks of vacation time per year, so a foreign vacation is a Big Thing™. And we’re always worried about money. With little time and little money, we tend to stick close to home. Someone posted in another thread that “90% of Americans don’t even have a passport”. (I do. I just need to find the opportunity to use it!)

This is all just off the top of my head and not well thought out.

3

I’d agree pretty much with what Johnny LA said, except I wouldn’t give it the negative spin. Australians would be similarly self absorbed except their popualtion is not even 1/10 that of the US. Because the US is so big, so dominant, and so geographically isolated, the “market value” of “golbal awarenss” is less for us than for citizens of other countries. I don’t look down on that, I simply recognize it as a fact of life.

I would, however, disagree with Zen’s #6 on one key point. I would wager that the percent of households in the US with a language other than English s the primary language is greater than the respective percent of most Western European counties wrt to the dominant languge in those countries (ie, German in Germany, English in the UK). We are, more than most other countries, a land of immigrants. However, his point is well taken if we’re talking about native born Americans who speak a second languge themselves. Even more so if we focus on those who learned their second language in primary/secondary school.

Don’t have the stats on that, but it’s pretty much what I’ve read.

4

I’ll pick up where John Mace left off and mention this: I was absolutely amazed at the global awareness of virtually everyone I met in New Zealand. It seems to be a near-universal tradition that when a young Kiwi reaches a certain age, they’re given a certain amount of money, told to head off in one direction, and come back from another. I’d love to see figures on what percentage of New Zealanders have circumnavigated the world–I’ll bet it’s very high.

But here’s the thing: there are four million New Zealanders out there somewhere. They constitute an amazingly well developed and cognizant nation which I highly admire. But in the past two years, the United States has awarded four million higher education degrees to its citizens. It has 7.2 million citizens with master’s degrees or higher. Heck, we have nearly 150,000 librarians alone.

One only has to read the SDMB for a week or so to arrive at the no doubt valid conclusion that America is boiling over with ignorant fools. But we also have a formidable contingent of highly educated, well traveled, globally aware citizens, and we at least in theory award these people on the basis of merit.

I make the following assertion: America is one of the dimmest, most insular nations on earth; but it is also one of the brightest, most proactive, and globally aware nations on earth.

We are, perhaps unfortunately, both at the same time.

Source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec04.pdf

5

Thanks, John Mace, I was referring to American born citizens in that point. Johnny L.A. quite rightly noted how the United States is so vast that many people take for granted traveling for a thousand miles without a change in currency or language. Not so for most of the world.

I also feel that there is a significant bit of ethno-centrism going on. This “we’re the only remaining superpower” mentality has caught on a bit too well. The result being that many Americans tend to feel as though the rest of world politics is of secondary importance. Public education and many excellent academic instutions do counteract this to some degree, but higher learning is no guarantee of a world view.

I do wish this was otherwise. The pernicious racism and xenophobia that stubbornly persist in America stand as stark testimony to my concerns. I’ll also second comments on a fairly common lack of international travel. Here, I’ll quote Mark Twain;

“A wholesome and broadminded view of the world cannot be obtained by sitting in one little corner of it all one’s life.”

I think a more cosmopolitan outlook would help this country gain far greater insight into world opinion of the United States. It would also provide our people a better yardstick with which to judge our foreign policy and its global effects. Balancing all of this is the incredible decency that so many Americans show in terms of foreign aid and disaster assistance. In some ways, this is perhaps the most frustrating of all. Despite our open-handedness we can bollix things up to an incredible degree because of our misguided blundering on the international stage.

6

Then there’s the redefinition of ‘regionally aware’ to ‘globally aware’ that a lot of Europeans do. Sure, Europeans travel to other countries more than Americans do, but that doesn’t make them globally aware - taking a train 100 miles isn’t exploring the globe, it’s just exploring your local region. Western Europe appears to be far less culturaly and politically diverse overall than America, so Europeans seem to me to be doubly provincial - in addition to only paying attention to regional affairs and not global affairs, they try to claim that their regional affairs are global affairs and are all that matter!

And before you go on and make claims about which region is more culturally diverse, provide the definition you’re using for cultural diversity. We wouldn’t want it to be just a meaningless term that gets parroted instead of something actually worthy of debate!

7

I have to agree somewhat with Riboflavin. How much, it always occurs to me, do Europeans know about the US? About the states of the US? Can they name the governors or even the state nicknames or capitols? Heck, can they even ID the states themselves on a map? What’s Proposition 251? Title IX?

What state is Ellis Island in?

Not that being geographically ignorant of Europe is good at all, but the question should be compared, home base to home base, for a truly significant answer. Europeans are lucky, they can visit Germany for a cycling trip and be in Paris the next weekend, then return home to England.

Frankly, in America, we can get close to the same breadth of experience, in plus or minus the same area, but… even odds it’s in the same state.

8

I blame the commercialism. They assume it is easier to make money on dumb. And the schools are ridiculous. We are sliding down the path of least resistance.

Dal Timgar

9

The “super-power” idea may have some validity now, but I think Americans have been more insular than Europeans for a long time, long before we were even though of as having any power at all. I agree that a fair amount of this is geography. Imagine if each state, or even each region, of the U.S. were a separate country, with separate language, currency, culture and so on. You gotta believe New Jerseyans would know how to speak Pennsylvanian, New Yorkian and whatever you’d call the language of Delaware. It is no surprise to me that the average Swiss can speak English, French, German, and probably a couple of others as well, whereas some kid from Oklahoma or Kansas knows a bit of whatever language he was required to “learn” for a few months in high school.

Here’s another question, though. We all tend to agree that Europeans are highly knowledgeable about other European countries. How much more knowledgeable are they likely to be about, say, Asian culture, history and language? I’d bet that the average American knows little or nothing about Asia other than its being over there somewhere and really big, and oh, yeah, they do karate and stuff and eat with chopsticks.

10

I have lived in the US, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, have travelled extensively in China, and am from the UK. Out of these experiences, I find the US population to be generally more unaware of the world outside their borders that any other of the populations I have lived in, apart from the Chinese.

E-sabbath, why should we know about the intricacies of your local government and constitution? I doubt you know, for example, any county towns in England, nor whether they have mayors, or what their council structures are, and nor would I expect it of you.

However, I would expect people to have a rudimentary comprehension of, say, the UK’s national government - and to be able to distinguish the constituent countries of the UK. And I do, indeed, know that Mexico City isn’t your capital (in the US I’ve been asked why I can’t speak French, me being from England and Paris being the capital).

For me, a foreigner, watching US media news, it is a fairly freakish experience. There appears often to be no news whatsoever from overseas, or if it is, it’s stuff in which the US is directly involved - e.g. Iraq - and then often it’s only human interest stories about the US participants in same. I’ve been told on these boards the difference in how news is treated is because of the dense cultural diversity of Europe. I don’t believe this to be so: In my observation Hong Kong news contains firstly Hong Kong news, but then goes onto areas of the world that have absolutely nothing to do with Hong Kong, then finishes up with some triviality from Hong Kong; Irish news is largely the same; Japanese news was largely the same; British news is largely the same, though certain Dopers have told me that’s because Britain has some interest in whatever region is highlighted because of former colonial interests - I demurr from this, but can’t prove it. In my observation, most US news starts with the big US stories, then the minor US stories, then goes to regional US items, then concludes with US trivialities.

In my extensive travels around your great nation, I have had several conversations that left me reeling. I had an argument with a US high school senior that Washington, DC, was the capital of the US - she maintained it was New York. I’ve been asked by a woman in Tennessee whether I’m from ‘out of state’. When I said where I was from, she said “oh cool, we had someone from New Zealand in here just the other day”. I’ve been asked ‘where’s Australia’ on a map of Europe. I asked an office of 50 people in Connecticut what the international dialing code was for Canada; only one guy knew, and he was from Ireland. When I expressed incredulity that this should be so, one of my cow-orkers protested “but I didn’t do geography at school”. I’ve been asked “if you’re a socialist country, why are you ruled over by a queen?”

I do not believe this is a reflection on anything other than the insularity of US media (I believe I’ve been called a “whiny European” for stating this, by someone who shall remain nameless, but who has posted in this thread).

If you choose to agree with me (though I don’t doubt that a few participants here will disagree with my premise altogether), I’ve argued on the boards that this is due to the commercial nature of the news media - in that, if you’re a medium relying on advertising for its revenue, you’re going to give the people what they want to see, rather than stuff they ought to see. NPR is, of course, an exception to this, but then it’s not commercial.

I’m sure the usual suspects are going to flame me for having said these things, but this is indeed my experience and my perception, and it is most certainly not without a great deal of experience of, and travel through, the US.

11

When Johnny L.A. said this, he hit it on the head.

As an illustration, I’m going to the UK for 7 weeks on July 3rd. The round-trip flight cost me almost 800 bucks, with student discounts and buying 2-3 months in advance. By comparison, a London-Barcelona round-trip in the same time-frame(8/18-8/25), is only $182. (and that’s just based on a quickie Travelocity search)

After all, for that same 800 bucks in plane fare, I could go to at least 4-5 places around the US on Southwest Airlines if I planned carefully.

Another thing is that since many US workers only get 2-3 weeks a year, and one of those is often earmarked for Christmas, they rarely have the time to go anywhere too far away on their measly leftover week.

12

Which sort of supports what I say. You live close to borders, you know more about international stuff.
**

Well, I might not know much, but I know a few historical ones, and a bit about old Sarum and the rotten bouroughs, and so forth. Heck, I could even name a couple counties in Ireland. What I’m saying is that each of our states has just about the population and size of a European country. So if you don’t see why you should know something about Texas, why should you be surprised when people don’t know things about France?
Specific challenge: Off the top of my head. Stratford on Avon, Warwickshire, Henley on Thames. Nottingham’s probably a city. Derby. Er… I probably recognize more, really.

In short: Yes, many stupid people. Many smart people. Many, many, many insular people. (I admit, I don’t know the international calling code for Canada, and I live in NY. I e-mail my friends in Canada.) Ignorance abounds, but the thrust I was making was that many Europeans are as ignorant about the US as we are about the rest of the world.

13

MLS, again solely from my experience, Europeans generally do seem to be more informed about the world in general, including Asia, than US people I’ve met. I should however add, lest I be accused of anti-Americanism, that this afternoon I was talking to an Irish woman who didn’t know the difference between Japan and Singapore (and in Hong Kong I met several Chinese people who didn’t believe that caucasian siblings could be of the same parents yet have different hair colours). I’m not claiming insularity is uniquely American (or Chinese, or Hong Kong Chinese) - just that this phenomenon seems to be way more prevalent in the US (and China) than other countries, in my experience.

I think that’s something of an exaggeration. France, for example, is a country of 60 million people with a very long history, and its own language, whereas Texas, while huge and with a population of around 20 million, is just is one subdivision of a country.

I maintain that it’s really not about geography - it’s about what the media chooses to inform people. Do you deny that, if your media was more outward-facing, people from Texas might be more informed about the world outside Texas?

14

I see E-Sabbath’s already responded, but I think his point wasn’t about the level of government involved, it was about the comparitive amounts of awareness between Europeans and Americans.

It’s true that Americans are often ignorant of foreign politics, but most Americans do have an awareness of American politics, even in states they don’t live in. And this implies a lot more awareness than many Europeans may appreciate. For an American, knowing what’s happening in California, New York, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Montana is the equivalent of a European knowing what’s happening in Ireland, Belgium, Italy, Finland, and Ukraine.

15

What, like Australians and Kiwis, you mean…? Or perhaps that isn’t the reason.

16

Of course, there’s also the difference between the local and national TV news, and also the fact that, well… face it. TV Journalism is fluff, by and large, and if you want real information, you go to the paper.

They do have papers in them foreign countries, right? I do hope they report better than the BBC…

17

jjimm, if it’s any help, your post made complete sense to me. Commercialism in American media is one of the specific reasons why I made my first two points about domestic broadcast programming. PBS is one of the few redeeming features of non-cable television in the United States.

I think it might benefit us to define “cultural diversity” (per Riboflavin’s post). I’ve found parochialism rearing its head quite a bit these days in Europe. Open borders and increased migration from third world countries has had a noticeable impact on several European countries. Turkish “guest workers” in Germany, residual colonial reflux into England from India and Pakistan, Algerians into France along with those seeking to capitalize on Scandinavia’s generous socialist benefits have all produced backlashes. France’s recent dalliance with right wing politics is a direct manifestation of this.

“Cultural diversity” versus “global awareness” is a much different question. Compared to individual European countries, the United States is far more culturally diverse. This is as it ought to be by dint of size alone. When you narrow it down to individual American states, there manifests a far greater similarity to Europe. With their gigantic immigrant populations, California and New York stand out as exceptions to the rule. Much of middle America remains fairly undiversified and exhibits some of the same issues that I mentioned about Europe vis other cultures.

In this television age, global awareness is largely driven by the media. So few books are read for the purpose of learning about other cultures that they are statistically insignificant. I’ll mention how refreshing it was to watch BBC international news during the entire Whitewater and Lewisinsky pseudo-crisis here at home. As an aside, China really does not enter into the equation due to its government’s interference with all media. Once again, the Internet shall prove to be an unstoppable source of information. American commercial broadcast’s utilization of lowest common denominator content has done incredibly damage to our national intelligence level (per dal_timgar). While spending patterns and more limited vacations (compared to Europe) also play a part, I see a rising tide of xenophobia doing more harm.

I would appreciate any European input about the current backlash against foreigners that is happening on the continent. I feel there may be some parallels between American lack of global awareness and European lack of cultural diversity. Perhaps, most of all, I feel that America’s role as international policeman makes it incumbent upon our population to be more aware of the impact our actions have. Although this may be a bit unrealistic to expect, I’m confident that a good portion of the world wishes it were so.

18

Well, we dial directly to Canada, so there is little use for the international dialing code.

Julie

19

Yes, but my colleagues didn’t even know that. Nor, indeed, did they know the US’s international dialing code from outside the US. In fact, the person who set up the international database for the company made it necessary for every phone number to be xxx-xxx-xxxx and every address to have a 5-digit zip code. :rolleyes:

Zenster, I can’t speak for European countries other than Ireland and the UK, but regarding backlashes against immigrants, in my observation in Ireland there is now a vocal minority of people who are prejudiced against eastern-European and African immigrants. Ireland was almost totally isolated from inward immigration for many years, and indeed the country was a net exporter of emigrants, both phenomena due to the appalling economic conditions here. Since the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom, immigration has started to happen, and with it has come prejudice. You hear the usual bullshit that used to be used in England towards Irish immigrants, and a fair few urban legends, too. The only positive thing I can report about this growing problem is that the bigots have thus far failed to create a political movement to further their ends - due primarily to lack of support - though they have been trying.

20

I suspect that schooling is a major factor here, but I have to confess that I don’t know much about educational systems outside the US, so I have a question for non-American Dopers: How much did you learn about other countries in school, and when and how did you learn it?

I can only speak for myself, but here’s a complete summary of what I learned about other countries over the course of twelve years in a public school system generally acknowledged to be one of the better ones in the US:

Sixth grade: We had to do a project about one other country (I chose Australia).

Ninth grade: One year of world geography or history required; geography was generally acknowledged to be the slow academic track option, and most kids with a modicum of academic talent took world history – which meant, of course, mostly European history.

Ninth through twelfth grade: Foreign language classes (three years of one language was the minimum requirement; I took four years of Spanish and two of German). We got some cultural information about the countries where our language was spoken, and the odd bit of geography, whenever the spirit happened to move one of the teachers.

Tenth grade: I took a couple of elective courses in African studies (one semester) and Asian studies (one semester), both pretty seriously dumbed down; we spent a good chunk of the time watching movies. Out of about forty electives, these were the only ones dealing with international issues at all; about thirty students per year took one or both of them, out of a graduating class of 400.

That’s it, aside from the odd presentation by a student or parent who had lived in another country. By contrast, those students who chose to pay attention did get a fairly solid background in the history of Virginia and the US, and in US government; we had at least six years of required coursework in these subjects, and plenty of class discussions that touched on local and national issues.