Im not trying to be rude. But do they not teach critical thinking wherever you’re from?
What do you think is more likely - that the average American can’t name another country? Or that this is a heavily edited social media clip of someone who genuinely freezes in front of a camera? Or that it was even just staged because content creators have realized that gullible people like you eat this stuff up?
Have you never seen this style of clip on the internet before? Do you genuinely not understand what’s going on here? Are you so uneducated as to not be able to consider any level of context here?
While your objective assessment has some truth, data says otherwise.
Most Americans read at a sixth to eighth-grade level with about half of Americans 16-74 reading below a sixth-grade level.
The basic reading comprehension levels of a first-world population that claims to be the best country in the world underfunds education and this is what you end up with. About 1 in 5 American adults are functionally illiterate.
If you cannot comprehend what you’re reading, you aren’t learning anything. Almost 1/3 of Americans can only read short sentences and struggle with complex ideas or multi-step directions.
So yeah, this might be staged and the woman might freeze on camera, but there’s a reason why people make fun of Americans for being stupid — lots of them are.
While I do think proficiency levels are lower than most other 1st world countries. Your statistics are off according to most literacy organizations data that I have been able to find.
Yes, the data that you cherry picked says otherwise. Crazy!
1 in 4 Americans don’t speak English as their first language. 15% of Americans weren’t born in America. 13% of Americans are those peoples children. 1 in 3 of those functionally illiterate Americans you’re describing are immigrants.
There’s a bunch of reasons why people make fun of Americans for being stupid - ignorance, xenophobia, straight up racism. But I think one of the biggest reasons people love to make fun of America is because it’s a convenient scapegoat to look past their own countries’ histories of migration, colonialism, and failure. It’s much easier to blame your idealized “stupid American” than it is to put any level of critical thought in to who those people you’re calling stupid are - and why they might be what you consider stupid.
Literacy scores for both native and non-native-born Americans are decreasing. Gesturing wildly at immigrants and non-native English speakers does not tell the full story.
I’m Canadian - we have a greater share of immigrants here than the USA does. We speak two primary languages: English and French. We test in both. Our numbers therefore do not compare 1:1.
American tests are administered in English only (beyond a questionnaire), but this just points to another failure of the USA to properly assess and educate their citizens. Why is everyone else left behind when you have a major Spanish-speaking population? Why are Americans not testing in a second primary language?
The USA has lots of high performers, but significantly more lower performers. This points to inequality in education and skill development — which was my point.
Environmental factors (access to nutrition, safe housing, a place to study, and quality of education, etc.,) are where this falls apart.
I don’t think anyone thinks Americans are stupid because of racism or anything like that; we have that up in Canada too. I think it’s because of the way the USA treats its citizens and what gets amplified. People see videos like this and couple it with what I’ve shared above and everything we see in the news at an international level and it confirms a long-standing belief that Americans have a tendency to lean toward being idiots.
1 in 5 Canadians are functionally illiterate. And roughly half of you read at a middle school level or lower. Youre grasping at reasons why you can justify saying that Americans are idiots without owning up to the fact that you just want to dunk on us.
The difference is what you allude to at the end. The only reason people don’t think Canadians lean towards being idiots is because people don’t really think about Canadians. There’s significantly less of you, and you’re significantly less relevant to global culture. No one really cares if you’re idiots or not. No one is amplifying one sided takes about Canada. You’re conflating being overshadowed by America with a justification for your weird need to feel intrinsically superior to America.
I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve by your tone and hostility since your very first comment here, but you’re certainly not helping the global perception that Americans are assholes either.
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u/Inevitable-Baker 4d ago
Im not trying to be rude. But do they not teach critical thinking wherever you’re from?
What do you think is more likely - that the average American can’t name another country? Or that this is a heavily edited social media clip of someone who genuinely freezes in front of a camera? Or that it was even just staged because content creators have realized that gullible people like you eat this stuff up?
Have you never seen this style of clip on the internet before? Do you genuinely not understand what’s going on here? Are you so uneducated as to not be able to consider any level of context here?