You are missing the point. The point isnt the particular manifestation that middle eastern anti-americanism took or the length of the war and nor is it bias. Its superficiality. US senators should not be surprised at hearing the depths of anti-americanism in much of the middle-east. Thats the point. Personally I do believe the BBC is more objective then much US media but we can agree to disagree on that, more importantly I think its less superficial.
Actually you missed the point made by Lemur866, one I agree with by the way…
No JXJohns I understand his point I just dont share his partisan take on it.
- 25% of Americans apparently believe WMD were used on US troops in the recent war
- A very high proportion of Americans apparently believe Saddam Hussein was involved in S11
- A national geographic survey reveals young Americans are about the least likely among all surveyed nations to even find their own nation on a map, and the overwhelming majority of them cannot locate Afghanistan, Israel and Iraq on a map even though all 3 nations have figured prominently in recent history
Now this is ignorance and its a sorry state of affairs, and everyone should be concerned about it regardless of which side of the fence you sit on. Its not peculiar to the US of course, the citizens of the UK didnt exactly shine in that geographic survey either but you got yourself a good enough sized chunk of it anyway.
Instead of concern though what I sense from some posters is simple partisanship and whether the ignorance is politically useful as my points 1 and 2 above are if you happen to be a supporter of the recent war. But the Iraq war came and it will go and when its gone and forgotten you will still be stuck with a generation of kids who are going to one day rule the world but who dont know where it is.
I find those points difficult to believe. Do you have a cite?
There is a common stereotype that US citizens are ignorant - eg not knowing world geography or history, thinking that the anthrax terorism was shown to be of middle eastern origin, thinking that humans and dinosaurs were around at the same time, not knowing that humans evolved - are some aspects of the stereotype that are often bandied around. I have my doubts. Sound like US bashing to me.:dubious:
While you may find them hard to believe they have all been widely discussed in these forums.
The cites
Point 1: One in four Americans believe WMD were used in recent war
Point 2: Most Americans believe saddam involved in S11
Another poll cited previously on this board found a figure in the low 70s % believed this but I have forgotten where it was. This poll I have cited shows 66%
Point 3: Most young Americans cant find Iraq etc on a map
or here
quote:
Originally posted by MGibson
People already have excellent access to current events. They’ve got the internet, television, libraries, book stores, and newspapers. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Marc
Now, Americans may be ignorant of the wider world around them. When I first moved here I actually quizzed a few of my classmates (10th graders or 15-16 years old for you pesky foreigners) on whether they could point to Canada on a map. It would not be a stretch to suggest that fewer than half could do it without a protracted “ummm”, if at all.
HOWEVER: We’re going to try a little experiment, which I’m borrowing from Bill Bryson (Notes from a Big Country- read it)…
I’d like all of you in Britain to think for a moment. Can you name the leaders of Holland, Belgium, or even Ireland? The answer is (almost) invariably going to be no- not because you are ignorant or uneducated, but because you don’t care. Americans have far less reason to know what Bashar Assad did before he inherited the Syrian presidency (he was an opthalmologist) than Europeans do to know, say, who runs the European Central Bank.
So when I point to this… http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1126_021120_TVGeoRoperSurvey.html … the National Geographic survey which clearly pinpoints the fact that American high school kids are as stupid as pig dribble- note that everyone else’s kids are too.
Anyway, I’ll take the Iraqi information minister over Ari Fleischer any day 
It occurs to me on reviewing my post that I failed to note that the leaders of Holland, Belgium, and Ireland aren’t dropping bombs on anyone- but this is immaterial anyway; Bush and Co. and a few dozen country singers have convinced everyone that Saddam was responsible for September 11th, and Americans seem to agree even though the news media IMHO have never supported this idea… so the issue isn’t whether they know the difference between an non-ideological (possibly even atheistic) Iraqi leader and religious fanatics… its whether they care.
Aha. Now I understand Saddams strategy. He thought the US would never invade because they wouldn’t be able to find Iraq.
I think theres no easy answer. The first and most obvious thing would be to radically revamp the US education system but thats not as easy as it sounds. In order to do it right and not make merely superficial changes, you need to promote a culture that inspires learning. You need a culture that views people who are smart as desirable and not negatively. Just watching TV sterotypes shows how much of a stigma we put on intelligence. I met a friend of my Dad’s the other day who came in from China. After he left, my Dad casually remarked that the persons brother was somewhat of a celebrity in China. When I asked what he did, I was told that he was the third most famous mathematician in China and used to reguarly appear in the newspapers etc (He died of stress sadly). Now, to me, that was just mind boggling. I consider myself very well educated in maths yet I would be hard pressed to name 1 Australian Mathematician.
If it were a pamphlet, it will be ignored by anyone who would really need the information therein. Those who would read it wouldn’t need it. If it were a “class”, how do you propose making it mandatory? Do you propose that all women be required by the government to submit to pregnancy testing every six months from the beginning of menses until menopause? How much prison time should women who do not submit to this testing be sentenced to? Should a search warrant be required every time or should a “blanket warrant” for this be instituted? Should this be enforced by the FBI or by a new division of “pregnancy cops”?
What penalties should be assessed upon people who dare to have unauthorized children? Should the children be wrest from them or simply killed?
Your “liberal” suggestion sounds terrifyingly right-wing fascist to me.
Like it or not, the USA is a nation of proles. The Powers That Be ™, both “liberal” and “conservative” benefit greatly from this situation. A discerning and educated public would boot both “wings” out on their backsides in an instant. An ignorant and anti-education public blindly follows whatever slogans strike their fancy at the moment, be they from the “right” or from the “left”. This situation benefits both the “liberal” and “conservative” establishments in the USA.
Shalmanese is right, the main problem is that ‘kids today’ don’t want to aquire knowledge. It’s not COOL, to put it simply. There is a real reluctance to learning.
This whole idea of ‘cool’ and admiration for the ‘rebel without a cause’ kind of look and attitude, has taken root in our society and is quite harmful, I think.
It stands to reason that the country that invented this style should be the worst afflicted by its results.
I suspect the basic problem is that half the US population is below average.
The reasonably intelligent, involved people are the ones who see a problem. The mouth-breathers who watch “American Idol” don’t see any issue - and they are right, it doesn’t really affect their lives if they can’t find Afghanistan on a map.
In any group or organization, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. That is nothing new, it is just how the world works.
Some people believe in creationism or flying saucers. Some people think the AIDS virus was bioengineered to kill black people. Some people believe Kennedy was killed by a government conspiracy.
Some ignorance is voluntary. You can’t do anything about that.
We could raise educational standards, but there is going to be a lot of screaming from parents whose children flunk (and teachers who aren’t doing their jobs). The idea of government getting involved in the news media scares me, frankly, half to death.
The only thing that will change any of this is if people suffer some kind of loss if they can’t reach some standard. A minority will work harder to reach the standard, most of the rest will try to get the standard lowered, everyone else will say “Sour grapes”.
Robert Heinlein once suggested that everyone should have to solve a quadratic equation before they would be allowed to vote. Don’t know if I would go that far, but sometimes I think I agree with Jack Handy -
Or else -
Regards,
Shodan
How about Political awareness tests? If you flunk one (I’d imagine them as being pretty basic but challenging enough to identify the completely apathetic) you lose your right to vote. Permanently.
Can I be frank?
In any society, there will always be those who try to acquire knowledge and who will acheive more as their lives progress. There wil also be those who could not care less about current events etc.
As a child I was brought up to recognize that knowledge is power and as such I am quite successful for someone in their early 30’s. My parents pushed me through high school and college and I bless them for their actions every day.
Here is the rub… For all of us that visit SDMB, read newspapers, scour the internet for information becasue we CAN, not because we have to, there will be someone else whose primary goal for the day is to wake up and exist. How is success measured if not against one’s peers?
What I am saying is that for every “smart” person, there has to be a “dumb” person to keep things relative. So idiots, world wide that is, serve a purpose.
I think it is important to acknowledge, as Debaser and ** JXJohns** seem to, that there will always be a certain percentage of any population that doesn’t follow current events and doesn’t care to. You can tweak the media and educational systems all you want without any significant changes to that group. The only thing that we can hope for is that those people don’t vote.
To that extent, I believe that we should rid ourselves of that old bromide that everyone should get out there and vote. Indeed those who don’t follow current events should be actively encouraged to stay the hell away from the polls. A vote based on ignorance is a far worse thing than no vote at all.
As I said, there’s no easy answer and its futile trying to look for one. In fact, I am beginning to think that there is NO answer that would not involve similarly undesiarble consequences.
On a different tack, how do we reform media in a capitalistic society? Big media will always be politically sensitive and slanted because it cannot afford to be otherwise. There is too much at stake economically to try and present a fair and balanced view. However, small media cant possibly provide the resources and neccesary journalistic integrity that comes from having big media. Can the internet finally bring about the promise of effective small media?
While initial experiments seem to be working, I would argue that there is an inherant limit to the growth of small scale internet media simply by the fact that it is limited to the demographic which seeks to actively seem out news. The American public is still going to be seeking out only the news that requires a minimum amount of effort. Perhaps communal news gathering through email forwarding and the like might start to break this but again, I am worried that communities will tend to cluster and only seek out information that corresponds with their world view. In short, it all falls back to their being no easy answer until we can train a populace to be actively involved.
I’m not even sure if we CAN do that. It seems that there is almost an evolutionary imperative that most of the population does not question. Perhaps the only way we can have a stable society is one where the wolves guard the sheep pens.
I say we all band together (us dopers) and take up a pledge to fight ignorance. We can make up little cards and what not. Go to different chatrooms/messageboards in order to assail the ignorance across the net.
I would say we start fightig ignorance on this board before we go anywhere else
I would say we start fighting ignorance on this board before we go anywhere else