Most of us, due to commitments here in the US and the air travel expense involved, aren’t going to visit Indonesia. Most of us will never even visit Canada or Mexico which could hypothetically be reached by several days of driving. This is a big place and most of us will never even be able to visit all of the US. Frankly, a knowledge of the customs in Indonesia or the UK or Uzbekistan isn’t something that pays great dividends here for the most part.
Yes, knowledge for its own sake etc. etc. etc., but how, in your opinion, would it “improve” the average American to know what system of government they use in Tajikstan or who their biggest pop star is?
I think it’s just a question really of why people tend to call American’s dumb. It’s virtually always about not knowing what people consider to be basic general knowledge (which is a big fat variable based on where you happen to come from).
I am not saying American’s actually are dumb but just trying to get across my impression of how the idea comes about. Of course we can discuss the why’s and wherefores of it but I think what we are more dealing with here is a stereo type and such things don’t need to have much basis in reality.
I am sure you can actually find plenty of ignorance of basic general knowledge in pretty much any country and have seen plenty of interviews of people on UK streets that show shocking gaps in knowledge.
Apostrophe usage, for example. 
If we were basing intelligence measurement on apostrophe usage I would be in trouble. I have just about mastered the use of the full stop. Techniques more advanced than that are beyond me 
Stuff like this comes up in Canada all the time. “Americans are so dumb they don’t even know who the Prime Minister of Canada is!” Herp, herp, herp.
To which my response is, “Who is the President of Mexico?” And of course no one knows the fucking answer.
It’s really easy to soak up American culture through osmosis; you don’t even have to read the news at all to know a thousand things about the US. Americans aren’t any more insular than people in most other large countries, but the culture from America is exported throughout the world, so people who know lots about America are insulted by Americans knowing nothing about them.
If that’s the criteria then we’re gonna have to put Germany on the “dumb as shit” list. Even though the apostrophe isn’t often used in German, for some reason the American “apostrophe means look out, here comes an S” bug has taken hold here, too.
I’m going to repost something I wrote about 9 months ago, in the thread “Why is the US behind educationally?”. I added a link to a referenced article, but other than that, the post is the same.
…
There’s a lot to this question and I think even the assumption that the US is “far behind” other countries is erroneous and based upon a simplistic reading and reporting of tables. Disregarding popular press stories meant to sell magazine articles, the 2009 PISA report stated:
(PDF, page 22)
So, statistically speaking, for reading scores, 8-9 countries score higher (depending upon your sample (OECD vs. non-OECD)), 39-51 scored lower, and the US wasn’t statistically different from 15-odd countries (including the UK, Germany, Australia, Denmark, and Hungary who all ranked below the US in a number of measurements.) This is far different from the usual reportage which breathlessly has the US 17th or 34th or whatever.
Even in mathematics, while it is true that the US scores lower in relation to other countries compared to reading levels, statistically the difference between countries is not as horrible as the press likes to make one believe:
(PDF, page 32)
The mathematically-challenged popular press reports blasts that the “US ranks 25th in math!” without bothering to consider if there is any true difference between the US score of 487 and the UK score of 492 - the US is behind and that’s that! The fact that the US is behind by a difference of 1%, and whether that 1% is meaningful… well, that’s not discussed.
In addition, a lot of people use these rankings, look at policy differences between the US and higher-ranked countries, find one or two policies to their liking, and say - “See? That’s why we’re failing - we’re not like Country X in that the US doesn’t…”
However, they don’t take into account the fact that countries ranked lower than the US also have the same policy and policy goals as some countries ranked higher, or that countries ranked higher than the US have differing policy goals than other countries ranked higher than the US.
For example, the above Atlantic article about Finland’s lofty goal of “equality” and their thesis is that this “equality” is what drives Finnish scores. But this thesis, that “equality” is the answer, isn’t proven - South Korea has a number of private schools and ranks higher than Finland in reading and math. If “equality” is the answer, then why does S. Korea do better with a lesser emphasis on it than Finland?
Anyway, I can go on and on, but I don’t think I answered the OP’s question at all, so I’ll get off my horse and go back to being stupid or whatever it is that we Americans do.
There’s being insular for all the good reasons rehearsed in various answers and there’s dumb-assery like this. This isn’t any understandable lack of knowledge stemming from size etc. This is plain old dumb-ass stupidity that should embarrass the questioner into silence before the words escape their lips.
But dumb-asses are everywhere and a seperate issue from whether the education system is producing the goods or whether superstition and anti-science quakery plays too much of a role in decision-making.
It does seem to me that any education system that in any way panders to creationism is handicapping itself and there is a very disturbing level of anti-science nuttery at the highest level of politics which doesn’t speak well either.
One observation: there are indeed many Americans who know little or nothing about other countries, and are absurdly PROUD of their ignorance.
On the other hand, there are many Europeans who THINK they know a lot about the USA. In reality, they know very little, and much of what they “know” is wrong. But they’re both absurdly proud of their “knowledge” and resentful that Americans don’t bother to learn as much false information about them as they have about America.
I’m sure there are many Europeans who are also PROUD of their ignorance of America. Unfortunately, they don’t come to American message boards to proclaim this ignorance, so we never hear from them…
You need to become more aquainted with the classics 
You mean you guys don’t celebrate finally getting rid of our sorry asses? I thought you’d be ecstatic. 
What a stupid question. July 4th is a day for people all over the world to celebrate the birth of America!
Actually, it’s not as stupid a question as is being made out here. I’ve actually traveled around quite a bit in the world, and at least in the last 10 years I HAVE seen celebrations of the 4th in other countries. And here is an example…in England. 
Now THERE is irony of the most delicious kind.
(Just in case anyone is missing the tongue in cheek aspect here, most of the celebrations in other countries are at US military bases, or in places where there are a lot of US tourists)
I think that’s what I find disconcerting. That sense of entitlement combined with a profound anti-intellectual attitude. Americans are fond of thinking “we’re the best!”. But being “the best” means doing things better and smarter than everyone else. We aren’t going to stay “the best” if other countries place a higher value on education and hard work. Even if they do talk like a fag, and their shit’s all retarded.
Good old Canada. Looking through a pick-list in a program I use we discovered just today that there was a listing for ‘Numavut Providence’.
I mean I can understand somebody not knowing about Nunavut (who does??). But Providence? Really?
NM…he edited his post.
How do you explain the fact, cited several times in this thread (I think post 9 was one of the best ones, if you missed it), that the US is actually in the middle of the pack wrt education? And that leaves aside the point also brought up several times in this thread that comparing the US to, say, France or the UK is an apples to alligators comparison.
You seem to want to cling to the premise in your OP, even though it’s been addressed already that much of what was in your OP was incorrect. Yeah, there are Americans who are and have an anti-intellectual attitude. Guess what? There are folks in France, Germany and Japan who do as well! Yeah, there are a lot of Americans who think WE’RE NUMBER ONE!!1!1!!!1! Guess what? There are folks in those countries who think the same thing. We are a huge country, so for every anti-intellectual you are going to have several who aren’t. Same goes for religious fanatic types. Those are all small sub-groups in this country. For the sake of the gods, even if you think Americans are dumb as stumps what does that say about all the countries who contributed people to make this country what it is? We are a freaking immigrant country. You figure we got all the dumb ones??
What I see mostly in these kinds of threads are either stereotypes of Americans and America, or ‘the kids these days are just so stupid’ type stuff that has literally been going on, well, forever…every freaking generation thinks that the kids today aren’t as smart, don’t have as good an education, or spend their time playing computer games (or in the past reading, or playing board games, or throwing rocks at each other…and in MY day we didn’t even HAVE freaking rocks to throw, we had to throw poo at each other like our daddies did before us while walking up hill to the cave both ways).
Yeah, let us look at the top 10 ranked UK TV shows:
Five of the top 6 are “*reality shows about nouveau-riche morons, drunken idiots and competitions between attractive egomaniacs scrambling for cash.” *( I am not including the Royal Wedding in there, so excluding that it is 5 of 5, actually.
Given our cultural dominance, there’s a better-than-even chance that the biggest pop star in Tajikstan is freakin’ Tom Cruise anyway.