It has been well established that the average American* barely knows about its own government, politics, and history and we know even less about other countries.
So here is my question: How do non-Americans learn so much about the rest of the world? Do you have a world history or current events class in your schools? Or do you just pick it all up in your spare time? If you learn it all on your own, where do you get the information: the newspaper, internet research, TV? How much time do you spend each day keeping up with world events?
Finally, this is going to sound horribly arrogant but I’m going to ask anyway. Do you know as much about other countries as you do about the USA? I only ask because everyone is always complaining about the “Americanization” of the world (ie McDonalds opening up everywhere) and I’m wondering if this plays a part in your knowing more about us than we know about you.
I know this post is probably like waving a banner and screaming “I am ignorant” but you never learn anything if you don’t ask questions, right?
*By American I mean someone from the USA. I realize that the US does not encompass the entire N. and S. American continents, but USAian doesn’t quite work and “person from the USA” was a little wordy.
Well, I know more about the US than I do about say, Zimbabwe, only because I’ve travelled to the US numerous times.
I’ve learned about international affairs by watching the Nightly news. This includes my knowledge of the US. I am as aware of major events in other countries (elections and whatnot) as I am of those in the US.
It is interesting when travelling the in US, I’ve noticed on US radio almost no content other than US. That is, here in Canada, obviously we get a lot of Canadian content, but also a lot of Aussie content, UK content, etc. Perhaps I was just listening on the wrong day, however.
I learned about all parts of the world mostly because I read the newspaper, participated in various message boards and my parents are quite aware of the easter side of the world because they’re from Hong Kong. In elementary school, the subject they call “social studies” wasn’t about history like it was in high school, but more about studying different countries. We studied France, Spain, Japan, China, India and a lot of other countries.
I can’t say I TRY to keep up with the world, but it’s just that I pick up information when it’s thrown at me.
One time, I was discussing this with an American friend and calling him on how he doesn’t know about other countries and barely knows his own. He challenges me and asks “Think quick, what’s the capital of Japan?” Of course, I shot back “Tokyo” within two seconds. It made him seem quite foolish because he later admit that it was the only country’s capital he knew about other than Canada and the US.
Now, that’s a little boasting, but it’s not hard to learn info about other countries. Open up a international newspaper, join newsgroups that keep you updated. Simple, if you have the motivation to learn, really.
My school taught both U.S history and European/World history equally. Two years of one, then two of the other, etc. However I must admit we never got current studies of either areas.
How did I cure a lot of my ignorance? By reading the Straight Dope, of course.
In fact I learn about quite a lot of breaking news on the Straight Dope Message Boards: the 11 September attacks, the loss of the Columbia, the Iraq War, the recent legalization of gay marrriage in Ontario, Vancouver getting the 2010 Winter Olympics, etc…
But the Net has revolutionised my overseas news consumption. I also regularly cruise past the BBC and the Sydney Morning Herald, in addition to Gxangalo, Monato, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the CBC. I even registered for the New York Times. I don’t watch a lot of TV news anymore because I have no roommates to split the cable bill (and therefore never ordered cable), but when I had cable I would regularly watch CTV, CBC, and BBC World. CNN was a last resort (we get the US domestic CNN. I wish we got CNN International).
In school I didn’t get a lot of history. However, in grade 10 I chose to take “History of Revolutions” with Mr Esler, mostly because it sounded cool. We studied the October Crisis, the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution.
This was just after Mao Zedong died and the Gang of Four were in the news, so large sections of the class was very relevant to us. We also found out about the Long March and why both Canada and China have honoured Dr Norman Bethune. (My aunt used to live on Bethune Street in Peterborough.)
Boney M. came out with the song Rasputin just as we were studying the Russian Revolution, so that was relevant too…
When I was in school, part of the curriculum was studying the U.S., which I now realize was a good thing. Otherwise, I’m a news person, papers, online news, and stay tuned for news at 11.
To paraphrase P.J., I know that all people are basically the same, and I learned this from sleeping around.
Seriously.
I was forced to take both American and World History in high school and college. Nonetheless, I think most of what I know about European, African, and Asian countries was based on reading books from those parts of the world. Fiction tells you a lot about people - and especially about the things a society takes for granted. History and travel books tend to focus on … I don’t know, they just seem less worthwhile.
Several of my close friends work for WHO, the World Bank, or do public service and all of them write regular letters. (You would not believe how politically incorrect people in the Peace Corp can be!) Additionally, I have close friends in several European countries and Canada because we met in a work situation or they married or dated friends of mine. They, too, write letters.
Since… maybe my early 30s, I’ve traveled quite a bit, for work and pleasure. It’s easier to pick up on what’s going on when you understand the language and can eavesdrop. My advice for anyone who travels is to devote at least one day to just picking people to follow around and following them around.
I don’t read well enough to follow newspapers to read anything but English. India, for whatever reason, publishes a lot of English language newspapers. Germany publishes English-language versions of some pubs, but I’ve never understood if this is a translation of the German-language pub or something different, which means I’m not sure it really reflects the German view.
Back in the 70’s, there was a standard history curriculum for secondary schools here in Victoria.
Year 7: Ancient History
Year 8: British History
Year 9: Australian History
Year 10: Asian History
Year 11: American History
Year 12: (Final Year for matriculating students) was Australian History again IIRC.
That’s how WE got a vague idea about the rest of the world back then. Nowadays it’s newspapers and the telly.
The CBC is renowned for its foreign coverage - we get a hell of a lot of foreign news on The World at 6 and so forth, and not just the US either.
Furthermore, my dad did a huge number of foreign stories - he covered stories in Guyana, Montserrat, Uganda, South Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and DR Congo. Naturally, we would get the inside scoop on these things. So the impetus to learn about the rest of the world was from him. He had just finished a groundbreaking documentary on DR Congo when he died, and in fact he won three posthumous awards at the New York Radio Festival for his foreign journalism, including a special UN prize for his work in Afghanistan. (The CBC swept the awards.)
I was also a voracious reader as a kid and still am, and I love atlases and maps. I knew the capital of Burkina Faso by the time I was 10. (Ouagadougou.)
My family and I have also had some opportunity to travel. We’ve been to various places in the US (where my mother was born); my parents have been to Cuba and Italy, my brother’s debating has taken him to Cyprus and Botswana, and I’ve visited France and Spain.
But I think there is sort of a cultural thing for Canada - much like the European countries, we’re not so very powerful that we can pretend to be a world unto ourselves and turn inward like that. We realize our place in a greater community all the time and we need to deal with it, so I think we’re in a better position to know more about it.
I don’t know if they do this all over the US, but the way they do things in the high school I went to was:
9th grade: american history
10th grade: “global studies” (world history)
11th grade: american history
12th grade: 1 semester american history, 1 semester law. law? why law? noone ever knew.
We never seemed to learn much about the world except ancient history, and in american history no matter how many times we had it, we seemed to always be studying world war 2. They’d spend a little time on the revolution, the civil war, and world war 1 (though events in between seemed to be skipped), and amazingly, nothing happened in US history from world war 2 till now, because they always ended there and got no further.
I’ve been told I’m ignorant because I’m an American before I even open my mouth so many times I can’t even count them.
(okay, okay time for 2 quick jokes
then I open my mouth and erase all doubts
I’m to lazy to take off my shoes in order to keep counting)
Okay so I still have a lot to learn, but I find that I learned so much more about the world since coming to Europe just from watching the news (CNN International and local news stations).
Growing up in the NY metro area, I grew up hearing only NY metro news. Sure there were international news bites but I was naturally more interested in the stuff that I was familiar with or would effect me. I think here people are more familiar with more countries based on the proximity of so many other countries.
I second the vote for CBC radio/CBC television. I lived for some years in an isolated Northern Ontario town with one radio station and one TV station, but when we moved back to civilization when I was 11 I knew more world capitals, world leaders than the rest of my friends who grew up in a border town with lots of access to American TV.
Of course I was a weird kid, reading TIME magazine (Canadian version of course) at about 8, and also read encyclopedias for fun, so I might have picked this stuff up living in Podunk, USA. I remember flustering an uncle of mine by asking his views on the events in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Said uncle had a grade 8 education. As a result my nickname from him was “egghead” for years until my aunt finally divorced him…