Brits are as dumb as 'Mericans...

In other news, 25% of the Earth's population: absolute morons.

 

Richard Lionheart is very much a real person

 

... and the equivalent statistics for American's knowledge of literary and historical figures are? I'd imagine they're pretty similar tbh.

In any case you have to understand a few things.

1. The Daily (hate)-Mail is the most appalling right-wing rag whose only function is to rubbish anything and everything modern. They still think the country should be run as it was in the 1920's and working class people should 'know their place'. They therefore have a vested interest in saying that modern educational standards are worthless.
2. I think you'll find the survey was carried out in such a way as to skew the figures more toward young people.
3. We have adverts for the following company shoved down our throats from arsehole to breakfast time...

http://www.churchill.com/

I've also seen another 'survey' that said Churchill was an insurance salesman, These things are worthless although they probably sell a few newspapers I suppose. They're just done to make dozy old twonks splutter into their cornflakes.

But it raises the question... how many young people in America know that the phrase 'Paris Hilton' can also refer to a hotel?

 

Anyone that saw this:
[youtube]-gCoMohQEkg[/youtube]

 

Its like I used to tell the jocks in high school.

Stupid may be genetic but ignorant is a choice.

 

Please, we're made fun of all the time, so we're used to it by now. The Canadian satire program "This Hour has 22 Minutes" used to have a recurring segment called "Talking With Americans" whose entire purpose is to showcase how Americans are ignorant of anything outside their own country (mainly Canada of course). The host of the show once got alongside George W. Bush masquerading as a journalist and got Bush to believe the Canadian Prime Minister's name was "Jean Poutine". (At the time the Prime Minister was Jean Chretien. Poutine is a Quebecois dish consisting of french fries topped with cheese curds and gravy.)

 

Kind of funny that the report itself slates people for their ignorance, and then goes on to say dick turpin was a fictional character. True, like many "legends" the truth has been embellished somewhat, but he was a real person.

 

LOL

I hadn't actually read the article but... FFS, that just about takes the biscuit, doesn't it.

 

was he by any chance related to Mr. Dennis Moore?

 

A man can only use so many lupins in one life.

 

Who's seen Jay Leno's Jay Walking?

 

Like I said, the Churchill one's a bit of a special case because there has been a huge advertising campaign about something else called Churchill that has muddied the waters. I imagine if you had something similar in the US about Lincoln the results would be replicated... probably down to the same percentage.

 

Arf ... not sure you're doing yourself any favours here Andy. Why defend the indefensible? It's a stone-cold fact that an increasing number of people who come through our "education" system are total clots. And the chap further up the thread is right, the Yanks are always (rightly) getting battered for not knowing their arse from their elbow, so when a story like this pops up, it's time to party!

Although all this story really says is that 25% of UKTV Gold viewers don't know who Churchill is. Which is hardly news. The list of things that 25% of UKTV Gold viewers don't know is a lot longer, darker and scarier than just that, I'm sure.

EDIT: I just remembered a funny true story - a girl I knew years ago thought the Berlin Wall had been built by the Romans. "You know, like that Adrian's wall up in Scotland."

 

Let me make this easy. I would say a good 45-50% of people in the world are stupid jackasses. Not just Americans, or Brits, or Canadians, or whatever. The reason that Americans get so much grief is because we are stupid, arrogant jackasses who are also extraordinarily wel-fed and rich. It just doesn't seem fair to the rest of the stupid jackasses that Americans can also be stupid jackasses, but then they also get big houses, big cars, and are arrogant enought to feel they've earned it.

Let's be honest, this board is a group of generally intelligent, internet-savvy folks who congregate around a soccer message board, keep up with current events, and tend to be curious about the rest of the world. That makes us pretty damned intelligent, comparitively.

 

Because I think the Churchill example is a bad one. I think there's a reason why 25% of a selected group, (I can't say I've ever been asked anything in a survey because I don't wander around shopping centres looking bored), think the word Churchill refers to something when its actually referring to something quite different. Bluntly, it's bugger-all to do with their lack of historical knowledge and says more about the power of advertising.

Hmm... not sure that's true. I think you're harking back to an imagined golden age of British education where the working classes sat around all day reading Proust and quoting Keats to each other. Generally speaking I think young people today are better educated, cleverer and probably nicer than we were, (well, me, anyway), when we were kids.

Mind you, I was a right little bastard, so...

Many yanks I've known have always claimed Churchill almost as one of their own coz he was half-American. Not sure it's a particularly good example, tbh.... which was my point.

No argument about that but... UKTV Gold?

Haven't received it myself for years but, from what I know of it's output, an avid viewer would probably know who Churchill was... as much as anything because of the re-runs of Dad's Army.

 

Yes, our stupid jackasses aren't that bad by comparison. They're mostly just jackasses.

 

I used to think that Americans were dumber than Europeans. Then I spent some time in Europe and realized they're as dumb as we are. Yes, they read more newspapers because they tend to take public transit, but have you seen the papers they read? The Sun outsells The Times of London six-to-one. Plenty of shopkeepers in Britain put up signs that say "Fruit's and vegetable's for sale," just like in the U.S.

The fact is, most people are predominantly concerned with the world immediately around them. They seek no education beyond what they need. They care about celebrity news because that's what they can relate to more than what's happening in the Congo. They know no math beyond arithmatic; little science beyond that ice freezes at zero celsius; and hardly any history past what they can personally remember. That doesn't mean they're stupid. Your bus driver may not know the capital of Sweden but might know a whole lot more about grease fittings or AC/DC albums than you do. It's just that most people aren't intellectuals. They don't seek learning for the sake of learning.

 

That's a non-sequitur. Had their historical knowledge been up to scratch, they'd have known to make the distinction between the leader of our nation during the greatest war in human history and a jowly plastic dog that sells car insurance.

Hardly. But it's established fact that the standards of knowledge required (and therefore taught) in order to pass our increasingly absurd qualifications is falling like a stone. Certainly, when my kids are old enough for secondary education they're going nowhere near a bloody state school, that's for sure.

 

Have you ever been over here? Lincoln is a car, an insurance company, a virtually innumerable number of apartment and office buildings, and a concert hall. Add to that all of the random towns, counties and sewage pumping stations and it's a wonder that anyone remembers who Lincoln was.

But none of that is an excuse for thinking he's a fictional character.

 

I once had to explain to an American that the London Underground is not a political movement, Aristotle was not Belgian, and the central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself."

 

That would make a great movie line!!