What would you call citizens of the USA, if not “Americans”? Still, every once in a while, somebody gets bothered by this. Read through some of these old threads if it’s still bothering you:
Since when and why is the United States called “America”
Is “America” offensive?
Does anyone actually object to the term “American”?
We don’t. It’s like assuming folks who know Latin are somehow smarter just because they know it.
I vote at almost every level. It’s important and it’s important to know the politician’s views on issues that are important to me and relevant to my life so I educate myself about them. Knowing the total number of voting representatives in the House of Representatives is useless information to me (Note I said me - I realize that there are people who find this information vital). I have bills to pay and mouths to feed and I know that even if I did disagree with the Constitution or the way the Government is constructed out there is virtually nothing I could do about it.
Well, I didn’t really mean it as an insult, but as a response to the other poster’s question,
I interpreted his post as being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and responded in kind (though with a legitimate point, IMO), using that poster’s own terminology, which I wouldn’t use otherwise.
BTW, since almost nothing in this thread is “factual,” should it not be relocated anyway?
We call people from the USA “Americans,” which is a term fully supported by my Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
- RickJay, a Canadian
First, I’m not sure that every bit of what I’ve described above as “common knowledge” comes to one by way of rote memorization.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of repeated exposure. I was one of those obnoxious kids who could name all of the state capitals at age 6…not because I’d made any conscious effort to memorize them all, but because I had a United States puzzle I played with frequently whose pieces also had each state’s capital printed upon them.
Is knowing all 50 states’ capitals “essential knowledge”? No, I suppose not. But I’d like to hear the argument that a person who doesn’t have this knowledge is somehow the better for it.
I believe much other “common knowledge” is acquired in a similar fashion. Indeed, it can probably be shown that facts acquired by rote memorization for the purposes of passing a test are more quickly forgotten.
And even if rote memorization is required at times, before I can come to your point of view, you’ll have to show me that the educational system when I came through it spent gobs of time in this pursuit that could have been better spent doing something else.
I see a parallel here with “new math,” which fortunately I was just old enough to miss out on. I learned long division the old-fashioned way (I was horrified to see the torture my younger brothers had to go through to “prove” their calculations), and it served me just fine, and still does.
As Tom Lehrer used to say in introducing to his wonderful song “New Math”: “…in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you’re doing, rather than to get the right answer.”
I’m not downplaying the importance of the skills you cite above…I’m just saying that you’ll have to show me how, as a whole, the acquisition of a certain baseline of general knowledge must inevitably come at the expense of these skills.
We used to call people who possessed this type of knowledge in several different disciplines “well-rounded” – you know, capable of carrying their end of a conversation in which a wide variety of topics were discussed.
I still think there’s value in that, as much as there is with a person who is expert only in what he or she has to be.
Right.
One could say correctly, half of us are below the median. That, of course, would lose the force of common parlance and the understanding of a good many.
To the OP. I don’t think Americans are any more “stupid” than anyone else. One could make a pretty good case for their being more poorly informed given their total reliance on cable news for information and analysis of what’s going on in the world.
But, I agree, many of them sound pretty stupid regurgitating what they hear there.
To me that is not stupidity, that is ignorance, the stupidity enters when you have told the person the facts and that person chooses to ignore the evidence or is unable/unwilling to check the evidence. I will always wonder why the people making those surveys or polls that show the levels of ignorance out there rarely go back to the surveyed a few days later, after the proper information was given to the surveyed group. We should then get better evidence IMO regarding the actual stupid levels.
It’ll have to come out.
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We call it our little off each end sale.
I’m surprised they gave a test like that. The cost of writing a test that would be hard enough to weed out the less competent nurses, yet not expose the university to lawsuits on the grounds of “disparate impact”, would most likely exceed the cost of just keeping the crummy nurses on. I’m not saying such a test couldn’t be devised, just that the cost of doing so legally and proving it was legal to the university’s lawyers would be very steep. It’s hard to be both egalitarian and to value competence.
I haven’t seen the test, but I don’t see why it would be difficult. I assume it’s about the same as tests we get in nursing school. There are a concrete number of acceptable Nursing Diagnoses as written by NANDAwhich insurance companies recognize, with very specific goals and interventions, all with evidence based rationales behind them. Added to that are some policies and procedures specific to the hospital and/or the unit, all of which are likewise clearly articulated. Anyone who can’t parrot that sort of information back when asked is opening up the hospital to risk in the event of an adverse incident or lawsuit. They’re not looking for creativity here, just widely recognized, evidence based practices.
Yeah, when they made the territory, there was a good comedy routine about “which part of Canada are you in now…?” “Nunavit!” For the outsiders, it basically separated the Yellowknife area and nearby mines with large settled white populations from the Inuit-dominated hinterland, so the Inuit could have self-government without having to use racial profiling. Sort of the world’s largest gerrymander.
At the time there was talk of having a referendum on the name of the other territory; then they found that some smart-aleck was gaining traction with a campaign to name it “Bob”. How does a politician argue against that?! “Bob is a dumb name?” So they cancelled plans for a referendum, and Northwest Territories it is.
The original WWTBAM had a seriously challenging skill-testing question system to qualify. They ended up with some serious geeks and gave away too much money; but basically, lawyer and teacher geeks didn’t make for interesting TV. (Except for the first winner who dial-a-friended his dad on the last question to tell him he was going to be a millionaire…) Regis had one loser on early who flubber an easy trivia question on Shaker furniture; it was obvious the guys in his frat had kept dialling using everyone’s identity until they got through and won.
IIRC the current WWTBAM uses a random draw to nsure they have more “representative” Americans. OTOH, Regis was smarter than you think; the host of the one Canadian episode allegedly lobbied like crazy to be host; then flubbed a simple question, pronouncing the well-known lake in BC, Okanagan as “oh-KA-na-gan” instead of “oh-kah-NAH-gun”. That’s like calling somewhere “Porto RICK-oh”. I never saw Regis flub one like that.
How is this a question with a factual answer?
I’d say that he was bang on.
An oldie but a goodie…
I was watching Family Feud. They were in the last round trying for the big money. A woman was asked this question:
Name a creepy insect…
SPIDER!
Me - you dumb stupid jerk! Everyone knows a spider is not a …
BING! #1 ANSWER!
As a really smart person I knew in college once often said - stupid people understand stupid people 
I’ve remarked on this to people in the past – I suspect Family Feud stays away from questions with factual answers precisely because an incorrect answer by a large number of people will still be a “correct” answer.
The thing that prompted me to make this observation was when they asked people to name a country in South America, and a significant portion answered “Rio de Janeiro”.
If it has to come out, wouldn’t that need to be an -ectomy rather than an -otomy? 
Good point.
[moderating]
Moved thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
[/moderating]
this is making me wish i could find that call where the people are arguing about the percentage points and the decimal… which i’ve actullay paticipated in at some point.
ahh here it is.