Not sure where to put this thread. It doesn’t quite seem to be great debates territory, and since i’m looking for opinions I threw it here.
This is kind of brought on by the thread about American’s not understanding Geography, and various perceptions that American’s don’t know much history and stuff.
I was talking with a professor who got his degrees in Germany, but now professes in America. We were talking about the whole Americans don’t know the world thing, and he brought up an interesting opinion. First of all in any country there are a group of people who didn’t care about education and never learned anything, so they cancel each other out and don’t matter. So concentrating on learned people.
He said that the general ignorance of the Americans, even other professors astounded him at first, and he didn’t understand what was going on. And he always seemed at odds with his students in the classes he taught. He said that he finally figured out what the problem was, A fundamental difference in higher educational theory between the U.S. and Europe. Basically that a subject matter expert in Europe is expected to know every thing that is known about the subject. They are supposed to be a walking index of that subject, and understand everything about it. But in America the SME is really somebody who took survey of the existing material for background, and went out on their own. Essentially that the American ideal was to focus on originality and growth of the subject, while the European ideal was to focus on knowledge mastery of the subject.
He thinks that that difference trickles down into basic ideas of what educated is. That an Amercian will consider himself intelligent even without the facts. Countries and capitals and dates are facts that can be looked up, so there isn’t much need to know facts that arn’t immediatly relevant, and that they can be looked up when they become relevant. While the basic idea of being educated in Europe is a large repository of details and facts , the more expansive and all-encompassing the more educated.
I was curious what the people around here who have dealt with both places college systems, or studied educational thoery think about the accuracy of that theory.