Are American's stupid?

[Sky Striker]

Yah know, even with some valid points, I can challege your theory of kids being pushed too hard. If we look at the kids that are patted on the back and passed to meet a quota, the kids aren't being pushed hard enough. If the government is telling teachers to pass a kid after they failed X number of times, they never really learned anything and that is the future of America right there. I think a better argument would be the subjects taught themselves. Some teachers even admit that some stuff that you learn in school (before college) will never be used again. Stop wasting their time by teaching state history and all this other nonsense they'll never use unless they want to learn it and teach them things they're actually interested in!

This is the first I've heard of teachers passing kids to meet a quota and the government telling teachers to pass students who have repeatedly failed. I'm not calling you a liar, but I've just never heard that before. I assume that this would be in public schools, but I've gone to both public and private and believe me, at the public school there were teachers who would have no problem with failing you.

As far as teaching kids superfluous subjects, I'm a bit cautious in that area. While I agree there are many things kids will never use in school, mainly related to history, a general knowledge of these things is a good thing. The subjects that are taught to kids in lower school should be much more selective and core oriented. For instance, I don't think kids in grade school should be taught French. It's completely useless here in America, a better language for them to learn would be Spanish or even Latin. Once they get to high school and start choosing their subjects is when they can learn specified knowledge like French or specific history courses.

[Mooshi]

Quota might have been a bad term, but it doesn't mean that it's not an issue somewhere. I know teachers don't hold back failing a kid, but you can only fail so many times before automatically be bumped up a grade. (from what I've seen, anyway) Even when I graduated highschool, there were students in my class that clearly failed. Due to lots of complaining, they graduated with the rest of us..that honesty cheapened the entire thing for me. :/ Rewarding failure breeds ignorance.

[CiceroKit]

This is a problem that goes beyond school and parents; it really involves a devolution of our society. Somehow, in this country, it has become a shameful thing to be better educated and a more reasonable person. Take a look at politics. By and large, the American people would rather have a president that they could see themselves having a beer with than someone who is smarter than they are. I've worked on enough campaigns to know this. When polled, people will say that they want someone that they can relate to above someone who is more intelligent. Let's take a look at where America is failing. It is predominately in math and science. There is a simple reason for that. Science is now seen as highly controversial, and where math is concerned, well it is better for the big banks and Wall Street if people are a bit confused where math is concerned.

It is easy to point fingers at the detachment of parents and teachers who inflate grades, merely teaching to the test to get funding to keep their schools operating at minimum standards. We could do that all day long, but these too are just symptoms of a bigger problem.

I feel for any kid going through the system now, where everything is up for debate. Gone are the days of presenting facts as facts. Today, nearly every subject is broached as a debate with two sides. In that environment, how does one determine what is and is not? For some things, facts are facts. Not everything is an opinion. God help us if it were!

[Spirit]

This is a problem that goes beyond school and parents; it really involves a devolution of our society. Somehow, in this country, it has become a shameful thing to be better educated and a more reasonable person.

Just look at stereotypes. Nerd and geek are derogatory, but they mean smart.

[Yip]

As far as teaching kids superfluous subjects, I'm a bit cautious in that area. While I agree there are many things kids will never use in school, mainly related to history, a general knowledge of these things is a good thing.

At one time I might have considered history as not being terribly important. But now I totally agree that having a general understanding of history is essential. Otherwise it's easier for certain false ideas to spread, things like holocaust denial, or claiming America was founded on Christian principles.  In college I had to take like 5 different history courses (western art history, eastern art history, and 3 history of material culture classes).  History is NOT my best subject, and I wouldn't have chosen to take all those if given the choice. But I do find myself using knowledge I learned in those classes, so it's probably good that I did.

Just look at stereotypes. Nerd and geek are derogatory, but they mean smart.

That's why we gotta take the terms back! I'm proud to be a geek.

[Foxxhoria]

I think every nation has its idiots, it's just that America has... more people.  So more idiots in general.  And they speak English, along with a large Anglosphere, and the fact that they're often in the global spotlight, so these bad things get pointed out quicker.

That's my thoughts at least on this.  We just hear about it because it's easy to, as we all speak English.  And then it's often in media, and media is often cross-cultural...

[Yip]

Americans are often stereotyped by other countries as uncouth. I suspect this is from the U.S. being a country founded by a mix of peoples. As such we tend to not hold to any specific cultural traditions. That plus the U.S. being a relatively wealthy country means you have a lot of them traveling abroad who don't adhere to cultural traditions in the countries they visit. This, to people of those countries, may appear that the visiting Americans are rather rude. But really it's that they've grown up being used to people having the freedom to live by their own standards rather then having standards dictated to them by the culture.

[Sky Striker]

Yeah, I totally agree on the whole "Intelligence being seen negatively" thing. It's unfortunate and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. Those things get imprinted onto us from an early age and are hard to shake.

[Arbutus]

Americans are often stereotyped by other countries as uncouth. I suspect this is from the U.S. being a country founded by a mix of peoples. As such we tend to not hold to any specific cultural traditions. That plus the U.S. being a relatively wealthy country means you have a lot of them traveling abroad who don't adhere to cultural traditions in the countries they visit. This, to people of those countries, may appear that the visiting Americans are rather rude. But really it's that they've grown up being used to people having the freedom to live by their own standards rather then having standards dictated to them by the culture.

This is really insightful. I think another piece of the puzzle might be the customary independence and self-reliance in the American character. US society was founded by a bunch of people who 1) were basically the dregs of the British Empire (indentured servants, convicts, third-rate gentry, and anyone else who couldn't make a comfortable life for themselves in England), and 2) were living at the edges of a huge wilderness which forced many of them to be frontiersmen in order to survive. Neither of those groups were really into following the rules of British high society, lol. So I think our insistence on informality, and our reluctance to follow rules of "European etiquette," are traits that have been there since the beginning, and perhaps those attitudes got handed down through the centuries.

In any case, I've actually seen a few surveys showing that, despite their reputation, Americans aren't nearly the rudest tourists in the world. (I could tell you which nations got the top spots, but that's not relevant.) Perhaps that's because many Americans are so embarrassed about their reputation that they try harder than most to fit in and to accommodate the local culture. I've actually spoken to people abroad who say that Americans are much more likely than others to try to say a few words in the local language, no matter how poorly they do it, rather than just SAYING THINGS IN ENGLISH REALLY LOUDLY like we supposedly do.

[Serra Belvoule]

I don't believe you can generalize a whole country under a single adjective, be whichever it may be. Now, calling a whole population "stupid" is even worse. I think there are, indeed, a big amount of dim-witted people out there, but there's also bright people nearby.
I think it's not as much as stupid people but what you ask of your people. If you start imposing policies that make you limit your creativity and development in the name of "safety and fairness", you are asking to dumb it down! And besides, if you give people the choice to not having to think too much, most will take it. Humans prefer pleasure before work! So in a first world country where there's a lot of shortcuts and easy paths, there's bound to be people who are used to be breast-fed every single thing and thus will have trouble when having to actually thing for themselves.
I do not like some of the american policies, such as the zero tolerance, but I do love some americans! Mooshi, you oughta know that better than most!
And there's Karizma, and Rab, also from Texas <3 and a BIG bunch of other people I hold very dear!
So no, i don't think "American's are stupid"