Ignorant Americans

that's him gone, who shall we invoke next?

Do you know? I think that might be mjp after all. I wonder what he's doing coming over to play in this soft-arsed 'hood.

He was trying to make contact just to let you know he's happy in the swirly whirly. He didn't have much to say as he was so overcome by the love and emotion we were all putting out.

What's the swirly whirly? It sounds ace. I wish I was lost in the swirly whirly.

Just bounce wanted bounce to bounce say bounce you bounce are bounce so bounce up bounce your bounce own bounce ar.se bounce stu bounce that bounce you bounce belong bounce in bounce the bounce let's bounce defend bounce the bounce americans bounce camp bounce (ralph) bounce when bounce there bounce is bounce nothing bounce to bounce defend bounce, it bounce is bounce a bounce joke. bounce sheesh bounce kebab bounce *exits breathless*

'ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' *exits with a very large pin and grin*

sour grapes. you spotty freaks are still upset at losing a war with an enemy who did nothing more than run away every time they saw you. then they grew to be a behemoth that eclipsed you, and you still get your tea party panties in a right snit when you think about it. the sun has set, my dentally-challenged british friends, and you should now accept your place as american lap dog and get on with your lives. your pal, mjp

*yaaaawwwwwwnnnnnn*

There are ignorant people everywhere Karl.

I suspect they polled some three year olds to get that result..LOLOLOL... ...seriously, though, what poll was this and who conducted it? I would be the first to say that the American system of public education is awful. At one time not all that long ago, it was the envy of the world. It was one of the first truly universal systems of public education in the world. Not everyone turned out to be Einstein, but it was a huge improvement over the class-based systems in Europe and the nonexistence of public education in many countries. Then, sadly, in the 60s, the liberal educational establishment got ahold of it and ruined the whole thing. In what must have been someone's idea of re-creating the noble savage, they decided that "rote learning" stiffled creativity and caused too much stress because someone might actually fail a test. Consequently, they eliminated the study of geography. Then the eliminated the study of mathmatics and arithmetic, substituting something called "new math." They also reduced the study of history and foreign languages...again..too much creativity-stiffling rote learning. Besides, you can always look those things up in a dictionary, or now on the internet. The result has been a complete disaster. Well over thirty years of students have been denied their right to a proper education because the administrators were more interested in testing their brain-dead theories than in actually educating the students. Fortunately, the "new math" was abandoned a few years back, I believe, and maybe the rest of the nonsense will be chucked out as well. I don't detest the American liberal establishment for what they say they believe. I detest them for what they actually do and for their profound hypocracy. If they could ever climb down off their collective high horse and walk among mere mortals for a while, they might actually get elected to office once in a while...but to do that would mean abandoning the elitist snob attitude, and I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

We had a similar thing here a few years back James, I think they called it 'ITA' or some such. I seem to remember it involved, in part, teaching English phonetically. The end result was a generation of kids that spoke crap English and who could hardly read and write. To make the exam pass-rate respectable they would be very creative with the results, and it apparently is still going on in some areas opf education. Another problem in education appears to be the unwillingness of any government to grasp the nettle and sack the bad teachers, (of which there is a number equal to the crap employees in any other industry, a couple come to mind as I type). In every industry that I have worked (and it is several) over the last 45yrs being useless at the job inevitably meant the award of a medal as my mate called them, he was of course referring to a 'DCM'.

I can't work out if that's really my cousin mjp or not. 'spotty freaks' sounds like him, as does 'dentally challanged'. But 'snit'? I'm not sure if mjp would write snit. Michael J Phillips, by the way, is a poet, Bukowski achivist and code god. He runs the mighty smog.net, on which I have been a writer on since 1999. Don't bother submitting your fey dribblings to him by the way. He only takes good stuff. Hey, remember Fey? Whatever happened to Fey?

Well, all I know is it's a good thing we gained independence from those darn Portugese. They're awfully fun to visit but their food does me in every time. Actually, Karl, I'm not surprised AT ALL. Lots of people over here still think George W is the real president...

Hey stuart, your giving my name ... a bad name. Go post to smug.net instead.

please insert ' & e in the above.

I'm not sure where they polled it, but I think that most Americans actually do know who they gained independence from. I don't know how it is over there in England, but in America our malls are flooded with pollers. It's a convienient place to poll, but it's nowhere even near an accurate representation of the nation. I would understand why most of the mall-hanger-outers wouldn't give them the right answer. By now, they probably turned poll-dodging into an artform, giving them quick "I don't knows" and "who cares," or the particularly cynical self-appointed 'troublemaker' would give them a phony answer like "The Cat People" or something. As a generalization, smart people don't do much hanging out in malls anyway. They're too busy sitting at home reading books (yes, there are actually people who read books ... I know a few!) or tinkering with a computer or some other nerdy activity. I'm betting this poll never once asked any of these people. I've never been asked an educated-related question. An equally accurrate place to conduct these polls would be on a college campus, where 99 percent of the people would probably tell them the correct answer! I bet 2 percent of the people the pollers asked have been to college. Whoever did this poll probably wanted to get that result. And, I'm also willing to give the American Education system a little more credit. Having just graduated from it a couple years ago, I can say for certain that we actually were taught who we gained independence from. Not only that, but it was in detail and on many different occassions! The only reason people don't succeed in the system is that they don't care. Instead of flunking them (like they SHOULD), educators make the courses easier. Although, I still learned quite a bit in high school, even though it was as easy as hell! (I mean... I got a 3.9 grade point average, and it didn't even feel like I was trying.) In my humble opinion, the way to make kids care about their education is to make it harder and make the teachers more strict! I know a few kids who went to military school (where the teachers are more strict than anything) and they told me they enjoyed it in the end! Of course, these liberal panzies won't go for that! Anyway, I am willing to make a friendly wager with the Superintendent!

you can't cover you're mistakes like that what's your name?

Stuart, obviously. gawd

I was taught to read and write phonetically and I have absolutely no problem with my spelling or reading... the difference is though, that i had parents who loved to sit with me for hours reading, and watching me write my daft stories.. they also used to teach me in the traditional way. I had every letter of the alphabet suspended from the ceiling on large orange cubes that my dad made me, and books were always everywhere.. When my eldest daughter started school at 4, she could already read - her teacher told me "we don't teach phonetically, so she will have to unlearn this method". I said that she most certainly would not be *unlearning* anything, and just because current trends in teaching dictated this new learning words by recognition crap, it was not something i would be encouraging. I said that i was prepared to see that she could use all methods, by teaching her phonetically at home, and she could do as she wished at school... and i think that this is where many people fail. Loads of parents don't ever pick up a book, and therefore are unlikely to encourage their kids to, and even more simply can't be arsed to do anything with their kids. Too busy watching Big Brother, or going off down the pub. My daughter is now 13, and since the age of 9 or 10, has had the ability to read like an adult... *Liana's mum would like to point out that Liana is nowhere near as pious, snobbish and self righteous as she appears in the above thread. In fact, she's much worse.*

Karolina, that argument stinks and you know it. It's like me trying to defend the statement that everybody dies due to a meteorite breaking their skulls by saying that I once knew somebody who was killed by a frigging meteorite. It's like believing bereaved parents of dead children when they say all children should be kept in their virtual prison cells. It suggests that you've got a chip on your shoulder about "making your own way"- an appalling mark of a working-class tory. The general trend is that "stupid" people are poor, because they don't get proper encouragement to learn, because of @!#$ teachers / @!#$ upbringings / living in @!#$ areas. And their priorities are different to the general empirical concept of intelligence - namely the accumulation of general empirical knowledge.

Oh Liana I wish I had, had that in my life then maybe my interest in writing wouldn't have come so late in life and maybe once I found it I could now be where I dreamed I always wanted to be and once even kidded myself I could be. Finding you have a brain so late in life can be brilliant if! the memory went with it as the two together right now would be fab but I know its not happening or likely to happen#### sad but true but so very lucky to have the one. Have to admit my 4 grandchildren are being taught at school and at home mainly by their father as he's the one with the brain, my daughter 35 is like me because I didn't have a brain when she was at school I wasn't able to help, also I didn't know behind my back she was skiping school more than she was in it and by the time the stupid MAN head made us aware, it was to late and she was up to all sorts. Even now I try to help but she is just not interested, she trained as a hair dresser when she left school and works for herself now at home has done for about 15ys, swears she hates it but won't try higher education classes now the kids are off hand. Even though she does think I am a good exsample to do classes at 60 and as I tell her if I could do it at that age and loved it, the age she is now could set her up for life with something she really could and would enjoy but afraid I'v given up now as its like talking to a brick wall and although I'm so pleased for her because her other half is so good to her she just takes advantage so can't see it ever happening. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth that one...

An American asked me on Thursday how I would be celebrating Independence Day. 'Nuff said

You may have had ITA at school Liana but the fact that your caring parents took the trouble to teach you traditionally made all the difference. The bottom line is, the education authorities dumped ITA because it was a naff system that caused more problems than it solved.

I had wonderful parents who taught me both ways. My children have all been taught the same way. Unfortunately the 2 year old still uses books as a weapon!!!

I recall the phonetics business. It was the 1950's and I was in just first or second grade. As I recall, my parents were upset by the fact that they were going to abandon it, rather than institute it. On the other hand, that was over 45 years ago, so I might have it backwards. In any event, like Liana, my parents, mostly my mother, spent many hours teaching me to read. It started with comic books. I sat on my mother's lap for what seemed like hours at a stretch while she read those same 4-5 comic books to me over and over. I also had a little chalk board and learned the letters of the alphabet and later, the numbers and multiplication tables, including all the squares up to 25. I have since forgotten most of the arithmetic, but in the dark ages before calculators and computers, that stuff was important. Then as soon as I could recognize a couple of words, like cat and dog, they sent me on an expedition into the dictionary so I could learn how to find a word. Then we graduated to the newspaper. All things considered, it worked quite well. All of the terrible changes I railed against in my first post took place AFTER I went through the system. The kids one year or more behind me got a raw deal from the school system, though as don points out, I think some of it has been abandoned fairly recently. I did have a problem with reading, though. The problem was concentration. I could read just fine and my vocabulary and comprehension was at a college level at the age of 10, but I had a terrible time concentrating. The result was that it took me ages to read just a few pages. Reading an entire novel was excruciating, even though I enjoyed the books. It's not so bad nowadays, but I can still have great difficulty concentrating well enough to read for any length of time.

It was a much later phenomenon here James. I believe it was abandoned in 1979, the year my eldest started at primary school, I'm not sure how long it reigned for, maybe 3-4 years at the most, so it was instituted in the mid 70's I guess.

My little boy learned to read using the phonetic system. I wasn't too keen at first but he seemed to be getting on well with it. It must have taken us about a year before we understood that this eventually links in with the traditional method. I've always read a lot to him, reading two or three short stories a night. We sometimes spend an hour reading together before bedtime. He has a book to practice from school, but it's such a breeze that we each alternate pages because I'm now concentrating on expression in the reading. The result - He's now reading books at school that are above and beyond the level of some of the kids in the class above him. And as this is a literary forum, there's a good chance that all parents of kids of similar age are experiencing similar results. Unfortunately not all parents enjoy words as much as we do.

Exactly, being taught phonetically does not go on for ever, it's just a launch pad for switching into english language teaching as we all know it later on.

As for yanks and geography/history... Well, that's a whole new hollywood rewrite ... I remember a few years ago reading a report from a journalist attending the olympics. he jumped into a taxi and the cabbie twiged his english accent and said how wonderful it must be to live in england ... he always wanted to see the eiffel tower. (I'm sure many of you will say this is Apocryphal but I believe it to be true) ... anyway, I later told this story to an american who didn't react at all. you could almost hear the cogs meshing. eventually he replied: "I don't get it" and he was one of the brighter one's that had befriended me! before justin et al jump on me, I also know many yankee doodles that are the full ticket and can pinpoint several obscure countries on a world map. greneda, sierra leone, eyeran, eyeraq, sorry. I'll shut up. it's an old joke.

Cos we never invaded anywhere did we? Unless of course you wanna count India, Australia, Canada, yes the USA before it was united, most of Africa, New Zealand, Falkland Islands, Gibralter.....oh I can't be bothered to list 'em all. Plus the Victorian government were the worst (best?) traffickers of drugs the world has ever seen. Plus we are one of the worlds biggest exporters of weaponry to anybody with the cash regardless of who they are to be turned on. And anuvver thing..............

Oh sod it, I forgot Ireland. And Scotland. And most of the Pacific island groups. And the Channel Islands

Did I mention the West Indies? And Canvey Island!

I wouldn't call the early explorers invaders. Well, ok we shot some spearchuckers who resented our presence in some places but we certainly did not invade america unless you consider the pilgrims a branch of the SBS. Ah, canvey island, such memories.

OK, I'll excuse the deaths of the spear-chuckers on Canvey Island, but I have NO doubt the North American Indians (especially those who were at Wounded Knee) would vehemently disagree with you about invading America. And yes, I suppose you could call the Pilgrim Fathers, along with the slavers that prowled around the African coast looking for volunteers to work in Cuba, the earliest incarnation of the SBS. Well done you, for making me aware.

Aren't you taking this out of context? Unless i am mistaken the pilgrims landed to start a new life, without weapons, in a country they thought largely uninhabited. OK, so not long after, (50-100 yrs?) they managed to turn themselves into the oppressors they had left behind. It isn't the same as an invasion. Anyway, what's all this got to do wiv educasion?

Well it's educational innit?

Oh yes, I just remembered why I gobbed off about it all. You suggested that the only countries Americans knew the location of were those they had invaded and I was just pointing out that they learned from us.

A lot of Americans are weak on geography for the reason I mentioned in my first post: the systematic destruction of the educational system by the liberal establishment that sadly still controls it. I've also run into many a Brit in London who was ignorant of European geography, much less American geography. For example, thinking it is possible to drive from Washington DC to Denver in three hours, things like that. Even worse, any number of Londoners think, just like many Americans, that the weather in Warsaw is the same as the weather in Siberia. They are astounded when I point out it is the same as the weather in Berlin, being much closer to Berlin that to Siberia. Even the media gets it wrong. For example, as you may recall, a few weeks after 9/11 a passenger airline bound for the Dominican Republic crashed into Queens. Now I don't expect the average person to know this, but I do expect the BBC to know that Queens is a borough of New York City, not a suburb. There are five boroughs in New York City: Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Staten Island. Yet, for nearly the whole day, the BBC announcer stated that the plane crashed into the 'suburb of Queens.' Given that New York City was the most intensely scrutinized city in the world at that time, the failure of a major news organization to get that right is astounding. Another example: The London Times ran an article about Condolisa Rice, again shortly after 9/11, and the title described her as 'minister' for national security. There is no such title in the American government, yet here we have the London Times too lazy to check what her real title is and simply assuming that it must be the same as at home. No one has a monopoly on ignorance.

Geography was always my specialty for some reason. I just LOVE staring at maps. So... I guess I'm a bit unusual for an American in that respect. I have a lot trouble with Eastern Europe, though, and Africa. Other than that, count me as a geographic whiz kid! (Not that I'm bragging or anything!) What I'm awful at, however, is naming important people in the government. It's not that I don't read the newspaper or watch news on television, either, I just can't seem to remember names. (This is true of people I meet, too. At college I oftentimes go through an entire semester without knowing what the professor's name is.) And, even if I do know a name of someone in the government, I can't connect them with their title. I'm good at memorizing dates though, for some reason, especially years.

I also want to point out (again) that education-related surveys cannot be accurate. Even if they did their polling methods correctly, there's this little phenomenon that has frustrated many-a-game show contestant. If someone were to come to me out of the blue and ask "Who did John F. Kennedy defeat in 1960," I might spend hours trying to think of that answer that I KNOW I KNOW BUT I JUST CAN'T THINK OF IT! Well... the question in question is quite a bit easier, but I'm also willing to bet that many of the people just couldn't think of it at the time. I get the same thing when I do stuff like play Trivial Persuit. I'm wary of these polls. They serve only to make people look stupid, and I'm betting that's exactly what the pollers set out to do. Do you guys get Jay Leno over there? He does the same thing ... he goes out on the streets and asks these simple questions, usually about history or politics, and he gets some strange answers. At first, I thought these people were genuinely stupid. But I've heard people say something like "Argh! But I'm good at history!" and I actually believe them to some extent. How would you like it if you unexpectedly appeared on a game show and had to answer trivia questions by a celebrity into a television camera? You're put on the spot! I can't say it'll be easy. I mean... if you had time to prepare yourself for it, it would be a different matter...

I can't believe that someone from England has started a thread on ignorance in another country. Here, we don't just admit we're ignorant, we're PROUD of it. Walk into the street and flag down a white transit van. Once the driver has put down his mobile and taken the cig and whopper out of his mouth ask him anything you like about anything at all other than football or FHM and you'll get something like "I don't f****n know, who gives a f**k anyway? they're all a bunch of p**i w*****s anyway..."blah blah blah [the previous quote will also include several dozen checks that you know what he means, usually after every two or three words] Am, I a snob? no, I too drive a large white van and spend time on building sites with half my @!#$ hanging out. Is this indicative of all british van drivers? no, see above. your point? people in glass houses shouldn't generalize.

OK - stories of dumb Americans time. I accept that we have loads of incredibly stupid people here as well so please don't see this as automatic knee jerk anti US stuff. However, it is true and it did happend in the USA. In 1984 I first visited that nation. We were driving down the Blue Ridge Mountain parkway when we were turned off due to a dusting of snow. This took us down a little road in South Carolina that was not often used by tourists. We stopped at a little roadside cafe in a tiny village called, I believe, Charles, for lunch with the two kids, then aged 7 and 4 (youngest still not born), and ordered lunch. The waitress spotted our strange accent. "Where y'all from?" "England" "Geez, that's a long drive" "No, not New England, England. You know, in Europe" "Y'all come on a bridge then?" "No, there is no bridge - we came on an aeroplane." "Why ain't there no bridge?" Collapse of stout parties. We then ordered out food and she asked us if we'd all like grits with that. I inquired as to the origin of grits. A tough question: "What are grits?" "Ah - we all eat grits." "Sure - but what are they?" This required a trip to the kitchen where the cook was asked. The answer came back: "They come in a tin." We gave up and had them. They weren't very nice. You couldn't make it up. We spent that night in Winston-Salem where the bar woman informed me that Europeans didn't like their gin and tonic glass filled with crushed ice before the drink went in because "We didn't have the technology." You've got to love 'em.

Ok. Subsitute the word 'Americans' for 'Pakistanis'. 'OK - stories of dumb Pakistanis time' Would that be allowed here? Why are we allowed to be racist against Americans?

Oh dear, it's twat time!

Pakistan is not the richest country in the world. It does not aim to take over the world and spread its way of life to us all. But please also note the well meant rider to my story. Of course there are stupid people everywhere and if people aren't encouraged to look beyond their own back yard then many will not do so. Sad but universally true.

i know this an astonishingly weird idea...but does everybody have to know everything...like we do? i actually like the idea that we alone are the "wise" ones...ha ha. ..and perhaps those banjo-playing grit-eating people didn't feel they had any reason to possess all this knowledge..perhaps their life was as full as it needed to be, and are cast in dreams and experiences equal to our own.. just a thought.

Right. Stupid people. Why are people stupid? Your waitress was poor and, therefore, badly educated, why is that funny? Because she's American?

Being poor does not mean badly educated. How ignorant of you to assume so.

Yes it does. According to the United Nations Population Fund survey of 2002: 'Although overall access to basic education has risen substantially over the last decade in many developing countries, the poor are still less likely to attend school. In many countries, most children from the poorest households have no schooling. ' Poverty takes away most human rights and it's not funny. Unless, of course, you're American.

stupid adj. 1. lacking intelligence or common sense. 2. dazed and unable to think clearly. [Concise Oxford] I thought that might help stuart.