I think you missed my point. It’s not American ingenuity that created the country, it’s the political/social structure of the country that spawned individual achievement.
Globalization exists because governments allow for it (or not).
Sure the political structure was great for a time, and now it’s not working so well. I don’t think that the whole system is messed up, but key parts, such as the topic of discussion, education, are totally fubared, and any child that is duped into thinking that American education is all that great or relevant is going to be the underclass. Those Americans that love their malls and their reality television aren’t going to make it very far.
Yeah, they allow for it because not allowing for it makes one into North Korea. Governments these days are really just big corporations anyway, and that’s becoming more and more apparent.
Erek
Your post shifted the commentary from Americans and American students as whole to people at the higher end of American education (college students). What you observe is an illusion created by different teaching styles between the 1960’s and now (i.e. you see an earlier textbook and it seems difficult because you are unfamiliar witth the style). You overall conclusion is directly contradicted by almost all evidence.
The middle and upper tiers of today’s college students absolutely destroy the competition from previous periods. The main difference between college students now and then is that there are a lot more of them. That means that a wider range of academic skills are enrolled in college today. You will see colleges that are geared towards people that wouldn’t have gone in the past. However, if you look at the test scores and grading standards coming out of any moderately prestigious school, you will find that SAT scores, grades, overall competition, and end product have improved considerably over the years. The Ivy League’s admission standards were a joke in 1960 comapred to now. Likewise, the typical Ivy League student of 1960 could graduate with a “Gentlemen’s C” if he chose. Grade inflation has been adjusted at Harvard in the past 7 years to make it more difficult because well over half of today’s picks were breezing by their old grading process. Harvard is not the same school as it was back then. Today, MIT would crush some of the people that were admitted before on day one.
There is a well-documented phenomena called the “Flynn effect” that shows IQ’s in America are rising at a rate of about 3 points a decade. That puts regular smart people of yesteryear in the average group of today and the average group back then riding shotgun in the short bus.
I don’t deny that mainstream secondary education has a problem, but at the undergraduate level we come close to destroying international competition. At the graduate level, we nuke the rest of the planet. INternational graduate schools simply can’t compete in most cases with American ones. The U.S. tends to play towards the higher end rather than the middle or lower tiers.
Don’t mix in the problems with American high schools with college and graduate schools. We tend to put our effort at the top and give opportunity to those who are promising rather that spreading effort evenly across the board.
Well the OP sure seems to mean “political” stupid.
In that sense I do have the impression that americans are more “stupid” than their more politicized european counterparts. Americans don’t care much about politics beyond the religious moral issues.
Naturally one must mention that there are politically ignorant/stupid people all over the world. I just think that a well fed and reasonably well educated american has less excuses for that than a poor Brazilian maid for example. I understand that Americans are way to busy working their asses off to care for politics… and that voting is done during normal work days… so that definetely doesn’t help spark political interest. Never mind the fact that politicians rarely ever get “overthrown”… so politics in the US can be very boring for the common joe.
For those of us coming late, after tomndebb’s ministrations, this has to be the most obscure joke in history.
I could be wrong but isn’t the rise in IQ resulting in the Flynn Effect thought to be caused mostly by better nutrition and overall health care - in the same way that better nutrition and health care has lead to an increase in average height and longevity? If so, than maybe the overall gains in IQ result come mostly from the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum and not so much at the top end. That has been my understanding of the Flynn Effect gains anyway – (Carry on - I do understand this is a tad bit off topic)
I don’t think Americans are stupid; at least not any more or less “stoopid” than any other representative sample taken from just about any other country.
I think Americans are somewhat lazy. Not in a work ethic sort of way (although I’m sure there’s some of that, too), but in that we can’t be bothered to think beyond the narrow mental box we put ourselves in once we’ve made up our minds about something.
IOW: Americans have smarts, and edumacation, but lack the energy, drive, motivation, etc., to exercise critical thinking skills once we’ve reached a certain comfort level with our personal attitudes and opinions.
In this regard, I don’t think Americans are much different than most folks in other countries. We just “shout it out” louder than most, and have the national financial werewithal to make our opinion…well, not count more than others, but to at least get it out in front of other opinions in the court of world opinion.
The original title was “Are Most Americans Are Stupid?”–a rare example of a self-answering question. 
This is a true, but I think it was a valid shift. The point is that even the most well-informed today are not as well-informed as those of yesteryear. The fact that America has dumbed down is a sentiment I have heard from several commentators. George Will. Neal Boortz, who I generally disagree with.
I wish the truth were that simple. It seemed difficult because it was. The style was different - it demanded far more rigourous study. It delved into the concepts and theory behind algebra and had full proofs for most of its axioms. My modern text does neither, but fills space with ‘real world’ examples that become stale quickly. My father’s text was dry compared to contemporay style, but still readable. I had no problems comprehending it, and kept it for several years as a reference. I tried to track it down, but it is no longer in print and I cannot remember the publisher. And I have seen the same with regard to economics and physics (my assigned texts were nearly worthless and I had to track down older texts from the library. Thankfully, business law looks like it escaped that fate, one of my courses this semester.
Some evidence may contradict my conclusion, but not almost all. Cite And todays rant by my professor, who has taught for 29 years, shared my opinion also.
I do agree with this. We do have some of the best universities on the planet. Be careful with using graduate schools to pump up America though - a healthy portion of those students come from the rest of the planet also. Cite.Cite.
I don’t see why they should not be mixed, especially if we are talking about what it means to be well-informed and rational. If students need to attend college to attain that goal, then the majority of Americans are stupid by the OP’s definition.
Personally, I hope you and this guy are correct and we have turned the corner. I stayed out of college during the nineties and waited until I knew exactly what I wanted to study so that I could receive an education, not a multicultural self-esteem boosting indocrination. (I did that on my own. 
)
Are most American’s stupid, ehe? Well, assuming we are…whats that say about the rest of the world (think about it for a while on a couple of different levels)?
I suppose its all in what you emphasize and whats important. If you think being informed on the issues is important, and that folks who aren’t up to date on the various issues (local, regional and national) are ‘stupid’ then American’s ‘most’ American’s would be ‘stupid’…in your book. However its kind of a flawed way of looking at things IMHO. Sure, I personally think that being up to date on the issues is important (I am a member here after all 
), but what makes my emphasis the correct one? The OP is narrowly defining what s/he THINKS is important from the standpoint of his/her own bias (and it is obviously biased, less why wasn’t the question ‘Are most American’s uninformed?’?). The OP is projecting.
Also, what are we to compare American’s too to determine if they are stupid? Europe? Well, perhaps US citizens are less informed than our cousins in Europe (personally I think this conclusion is flawed, having been to Europe several times and having a number of friends in various countries over there…but assuming its true for the sake of argument), and if being uninformed equals ‘stupid’ then perhaps the OP has a point. Couple of problems though. When we compare it to ‘Europe’ which nation are we talking about? Are only Western European nations to be considered or all of Europe? Also, the question arises…why only consider Europe? If we look at the world as a whole I’d say that the average US citizen is vastly more informed that, say, the average bushman in Africa. Certainly they are vastly more informed than the average peasant in Mexico, or the average citizen in nearly all of Central and South America. Having been to China I’ll go so far as to say that the average US citizen is vastly more informed, especially about global issues, than the average Chinese citizen.
So…does this mean the average US citizen is ‘smart’ because they are better informed than most citizens in the wider world…but ‘stupid’ because they are (perhaps) less informed than the average citizen in ‘Europe’? :dubious: Does ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’ hinge on being informed or not informed? Are there no better ways of determining this? I can think of several (biased) factors to determine how ‘smart’ or ‘stupid’ the average citizen of a nation is when compared to other nations (I’m unsure how one would go about determining how ‘stupid’ or ‘smart’ a nations populations is in a vaccume…compared to what?). Would mine be better? :dubious:
I wish my fellow citizens thought that being informed on ever level was more important and so expended the effort to become more informed. To me its part of the duty of being a citizen in a democratic nation…being able to choose wisely after studying the issues which candidate best represents us. However, I don’t think it makes them ‘stupid’ because they choose to emphasis something else in their lives (mainly making a living and enjoying life…neither a bad thing). Who am I (or more importantly the OP) to say whats the most important thing, the defining thing, the thing that distinguishes the ‘stupid’ from the ‘smart’?
-XT
(bolding mine)
Wow… just WOW!.. like, I don’t know like, what to say to that…
(except that, in my opinion, that is utter horseshit. few americans–even among the highly-educated–have a rich enough vocabulary, with enough discriminating and subtle words, to express all but the most basic thoughts economically.)
Oh yeah— and Americans, as a whole, ARE stupider than other industrialized nations’ populations. Sorry-- I know that the USA loves to have everybody and everything perfectly equal. I know the USA HATES elitism (much to its own peril); but not every nation’s citizens are exactly as intelligent as every other nation’s. Somebody has to be on the stupid side of the curve, and there we [the USA] be being.
In part, I blame our freedom. In America we are free to choose private industry over education; profits over intelligence; personal material wealth over social and cultural health. And by-and-large those are the choices that we make. That’s freedom, ain’t it?
In America we are free to demand that schools and universities lower their standards enough so that our kids, Joe and Jenny GreekWeek can graduate with at least a ‘B’ average and then with meaningless business degree in hand, join the cool queue for the dumbed-down corporate HabiTrail.
in “Old Europe” parents can’t play that shit (though I imagine that is changing for the worse) because the central government is strong enough to say, “sorry-- we’re not going to dumb down our entire educational system just so your intellectually scant children can feel good about themselves and get high marks. No. That’s what we have vocational tracks for. Really Sir-- there is nothing dishonorable about being a drill-press operator, I’m sure Joe will find it quite ducky!”
Freedom’s a great thing, but you gotta take the good with the bad. With freedom of choice comes the freedom to make incredibly bad choices. For example-- continuing, in the modern era, to fund our public schools primarily with property taxes!. That’ll raise those inner-city and rural IQ’s pronto!
But hey, I GOT MINE!!!
**USA! BEST CUNTRY EVAH!!! **
and on preview-- considering xtisme’s post: I think a fair comparison can only be made among nations that have the resources to educate their citizens to the highest levels. When considering just this group (often referred to as the wealthy and industrialized nations), the countries that willfully under-educate their people and celebrate anti-intellectualism deserve disdain.
I don’t believe that we do destroy the international competetion at the undergraduate level. Far from it, in my opinion.
At the graduate level, you are correct. The USA has far and away the best graduate schools in the world. Partly because we cherry-pick all the super-bright undergraduates from abroad; with their heads fattened for our feasting by their superior lower-education (and undergraduate) systems. And in part because graduate schools are often more about research than teaching. Graduate students (as teaching and research assistants) are used as low-wage labor to increase the profit margins of these money-making enterprises cloaked in school’s clothing (I could be wrong, but it seems to me that a lot of graduate-school research is closely tied to corporations).
Is it any surprise that the All-Knowing, All-Powerful, Unerring, and Uber-Benevolent Invisible Hand would choose the USA as the home of the most capitalistic higher-earning institutions on the planet?
You know what… I’ve had this impression too. Maybe people who get interviewed on TV are always the better articulated ? This one time I saw even what was obviously a poor black guy speak quite well… then a young office worker.
Naturally you get the ocasional “nukular”… but overall I agree that American are quite articulate.
The question that always pops into my mind when the american is compared to the european is… who are you comparing the american student to? The ‘people like you’, or the average european? You don’t honestly think your average european citizen is more educated than your average american, do you? I know germans, at least, and their education is not nearly as good as my own, and these are people working in management capacity at large companies.
jjimm the average IQ is 100 by definition, so don’t say that their IQ is ONLY 100. That’s … well… average!
Here’s a link to a table that shows the states broken down by average IQ (and who they voted for in the election, since this thread has a political tone to it). It makes for interesting reading!
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/US-Election-IQ2004.htm
Illu
(My first post!)
I think Americans are quite intelligent. After all they belong to the species homo sapiens and although I can’t find a scientific study to prove it, I’m quite sure that homo sapiens are the most intelligent species on earth.
No, really? Well who’d have thought that, eh?
I must be stupid.
(Welcome to the SDMB, but note that a lot of posts here are laden with irony, deadpan humour, and sarcasm.)
I would never call Americans stupid… distracted, rather. Worrying more about Tom Cruise’s current girlfriend than the Federal Reserve, for example, strikes me as a bit odd. Regarding vocabulary and articulacy, I find Americans no more or less articulate than Brits but I have on a few occasions had to explain what English words mean to Americans (autodidact and the fairly self-explanatory automatonophobia come to mind), which I find strange considering that I don’t have a huge English vocabulary myself.
I do think that IQ’s are a terribly ineffective way of measuring a person’s intelligence, by the way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm
It’s a shame that 40% of Britons are unconvinced by evolution. But it does show that we tend to have similar issues. Does anyone have any more of those highly entertaining surveys?
“Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!” -George Carlin