This thread got me thinking about different kinds of cultural literacy – what a decently educated person should, at a minimum, be expected to know about various subjects. I can pretty well guess what those standards should be for most subjects (even where I fall well short), but one has me stumped: what are educated non-Americans expected to know about the United States? This, to my mind, is complicated by a couple of factors:
In my experience, many people around the world know (or think they know) far more about the United States than they do about most other countries, I guess because of our superpower status and the export of our cultural products. So this, I would think, swings the expectations upward.
In spite of that, many non-Americans are offended if Americans expect them to know more than a bare minimum about the United States – to do so is seen as arrogance. So that swings the expectations downward.
Familiarity with American culture does not necessarily translate into knowledge about American history and institutions. You could know “Friends” backwards and forwards, but not have heard of the American Civil War.
I would expect people of differing countries to have differing degrees of knowledge about the US. For example, I would expect Britons to know more about the US (because of our common language and history) than I would expect from Italians.
So, non-Americans, what facts about the US would you expected decently educated people from your country to know? I’m more interested in “hard” facts (history, politics, social structure, etc.) than things like pop culture references, though you can include that too, if you think it’s relevant.
One thing non-Americans, especially Europeans, should know if they are visiting here:
It’s a big place, especially in the West. It would probably take you about five days to drive across it from the east coast to the west coast. The cities are much farther apart than they are in Europe.
The people I talk to on a daily basis know pretty much zilch about the US and it doesn’t really affect their day to day lives. I’m no longer surprised when people ask me whether Chicago is a city or a state, or if there are gypsies in America, or people in America speak Bulgarian.
Hmm. The first two things don’t terribly surprise me; the last (assuming they’re asking if most Americans speak Bulgarian) does. I was going to say that a minimum I’d expect from any educated person worldwide would be the ability to pick out the US on a map and know that the majority language is English. (And, possibly, be able to name the current president, since he is, for better or worse, one of the most influential people in the world.)
Folks seem to be familiar with NYC, LA/Hollywood, and maybe Texas and Florida in a general sense. Folks who follow the news would have heard of George Bush and his fellows (Condi Rice). I would doubt they could name any other states any more than I could name the provinces (states?) of Germany.
Ironically enough, I find there are plenty of non-US citizens that know more about the US than a scarily large percentage of natural born citizens. It’s sport in France and Germany to know more about dysfunctional US politics than the average American tourist. I think it’s a safe wager that the average Japanese high school student would score better on a N. American geography test than the average American high school student.
Americans are dumb, dumb, dumb. Now THAT is an important thing to keep in mind.
Non-Americans should be expected to know everything there is to know about American culture, history, government, and geography, in light of the superior education that they generally receive.
Unless we’ve visited them, we’re familiar with Hollywood/LA and New York as general concepts, not as individual locations with identities. Images and reputations of these places come from popular culture, not from reality.
Perfect example: until earlier this week, when I had a specific reason to look into it (relatives moving there), I’d have struggled to correctly identify all of the boroughs of New York on an outline map. But then, why would I? It’s not like I couldn’t name them, nor tell you something about each of them, mostly avoiding half-baked stereotypes.
I suppose my point is that familiarity with geography isn’t a good measure of a place. I’m sure most Brits couldn’t tell you which state Vegas is in (and probably a fair few Americans would struggle), but does that tell you anything about their knowledge or ignorance of that city?
I’m wondering if the OP’s observation of offence caused by the expectation of knowledge is perhaps related to it being this specific knowledge…I would expect an educated American to understand the concept of the industrial revolution in Britain, but wouldn’t expect them to be able to identify the major industrial centres of the time on a map.
The OP touches on subjects which are far more relevant, which is an understanding of the formative history of a superpower. Plenty of Brits could tell you something about slavery, but little about its abolition in America. (I can’t help thinking of Much Apu About Nothing…)
The only thing I’d expect most non-Americans to know about America is that the hysterical tropes about the idiocy, violence, and xenophobia of average Americans aren’t true.
But I’m starting to be convinced that not even most Americans disbelieve those tropes.
I think that they should know zilch; i.e., I don’t see any obligation there, if that makes sense. They’re free to know absolutely nothing whatsoever. That said, the only places outside the States I’ve been to have been Canada, Ireland, England, and Wales, and I’ve found people to be able to converse about things American, and I don’t just mean the cast of Friends.
Some things have surprised me, simply because I take them for granted. In England I explained how the States has more than fifty different legal codes, and that laws in one state don’t apply in others. The woman was dumbfounded; she was educated and intelligent, but she just took for granted the opposite. For my part, I was dumbfounded when I learned there was no right to not incriminate one’s self.
Most Brits don’t understand that Scotland has a separate legal system. And the right to avoid self-incrimination exists, as part of human rights legislation.
I suspect most Americans who have never lived in New York and don’t have friends or relatives who have lived there couldn’t name the boroughs of New York or tell you something about any of them. I couldn’t.
Most Americans know very little about slavery except in the US. I remember going to a maritime museum in England (don’t remember where) and seeing a statue of George III, portraying him as good for abolishing slavery. Of course, that throws Americans for a loop, since George III is such a villain in our history classes…
I don’t actually expect non-Americans to know anything about America, except that we speak English, where to find us on a globe, and what currency we use. I was surprised when I went to Australia in 2005, and a salesman at a store there asked me about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger when I said I was from California.
Heh, we’re good at elevating Brits to unjustified heights. The difference between our teaching of Cromwell and that my Irish relatives received is gobsmacking.