I don't think I said that Iraq didn't affect them. But I think that at some level, most Americans are still fundamentally not concerned, despite the number of troops over there. And I think their lack of concern is being carefully nurtured by various governmental and pressure groups, because lack of concern keeps anyone from calling for any sweeping changes in the United States itself.
Just as a simple analogy -- electricity affects almost every aspect of my life, but I'm not especially concerned about it. It's there when I need it to be, and if it goes out for some reason (a power line breaks or something), I simply phone the relevant person and it gets sorted out. I'm affected by it, but I'm not especially concerned.
Why does one need to understand geopolitical issues? I don't understand electricity -- and the whole point of the power grid and the electric companies is that I don't need to understand it. It's there when I want it to be (or I phone someone who does understand it). The bright young men in the white lab coats will sort it all out of something goes wrong -- that's what they get paid to do, to understand electricity.
Part of the problem with our current technological society is that one can't understand everything, and one needs to rely on specialists. (The standard example I've often heard is that no one single person in the entire world could make a pencil by himself.) I consider myself reasonably broadly educated, but I can name dozens of services I demand, literally on a daily basis, that I couldn't myself perform and I don't need to understand. I can't harvest coffee, I can't mill paper, I can't manufacture fiber-optic cable, I can't refine petrol, I can't bind a book, I can't vulcanize rubber, I can't injection-mold plastics, et cetera. I also can't set a bone, fill a cavity, weld pipe, lay brick, adjust spark plug timing, install lock-sets, make cheese, butcher a steer, .... the list goes on and on.
Doing all those things are for specialists. I'm talking general knowledge here - something that everyone should know, at least to some degree. Especially if it affects them in such a way that they have to send their sons to fight in a far away country. Well, what is the background for the situation in Iraq? That's why you need to understand geopolitical issues. You can't just rely on what your TV tells you.
How else will you be able to distinguish between those who tell you the truth and those who tries to con you? You can't, unless you have at least some knowledge of the issues.
It is precisely the same way we work, as skeptics, to inform people what to look out for in the occult world. It doesn't take that much. I'm not asking that everyone has the same experience and knowledge as Randi, but I do want people know at least a few of the tricks we see.
People may not be as knowledgable about the deeper workings of a cold-reading, but if they knew a smidgen of the techniques, they are far, far better off than if they had no knowledge at all.
I can, however, find Afghanistan on a map. Let's look at just how useful that skill is. How often do you need someone to butcher a steer for you? Let's see what happens when you wander in to the local butcher's shop, and you say "I need a half-kilo of sausages. I don't have any money on me right now, but I can find Afghanistan on a map for you. Perhaps we can cut a deal?"
Now, I probably could cut a deal if what I offered was to re-paint the butcher's house, or lay a new brick walkway for him, or fill his daughter's cavities, or even haul the weeds out of his back garden. But what hole in the butcher's life can I fill with my knowledge of how many people there are in the United States?
It is part and parcel of knowing what world you live in. Do you want to live in a world that you understand, or do you want to live in a world that you don't understand?
You don't consider general geographical knowledge as a necessary part of how you understand the world. From your arguments, it is clear that you don't understand the necessity of having such knowledge.
I think that may be the biggest problem of all.
I am not exactly sure. From what I understand, they do a lot better than public schools, at the very least. How they stack up to the rest of the world, I don't know.
Unfortunately, no links for you since I am basing this on something I read in Newsweek magazine some time ago and something I heard on NPR.
Tsk, tsk...
Careful there. It's a lot easier to travel outside your own country if the next country over is at most a couple of hundred miles away. Someone could travel from Spain to Italy and cover less distance than it would take him to get from El Paso Texas, to Houston. It's almost impossible for a Frenchman to travel 200 miles in any direction without leaving France. I'm headed on a trip to the Rocky Mountains this weekend. About 2000 miles, and I'll still be landlocked in the US. Fly 2000 miles in any direction from Paris and you won't even be in Europe any more, let alone France.
Sure. The US is kinda big, no doubt about it. But today it isn't a question of distances. You can fly from Kansas to New York just as easy as you can fly from Kansas to Mexico and Canada.
Isn't there a desire to see something else than the US?
Careful again. Since English is the world's lingua franca, is this a meaningful comparison?
Your American-centered approach is showing: English is the world's lingua franca in the Western world, yes.
Just south of your border, you got a whole continent filled with people who speak Spanish and Portuguese. Go to China, and you got more than 3 times the number of Americans speaking Mandarin/Cantonese.
To many Europeans, English isn't a foreign language so much as it is a second language. How many Europeans speak a foreign language other than English?
Quite many, actually:
Pupils in upper secondary education learn at least two foreign languages in Belgium's Flemish Community, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Sweden, Cyprus, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia.
...
English is the language taught most often at lower secondary level in the EU. 93% of children there learn English. At upper secondary level, English is even more widely taught.
French is taught at lower secondary level in all EU countries except Slovenia. A total of 33% of European Union pupils learn French at this level. At upper secondary level the figure drops slightly to 28%.
German is taught in nearly all EU countries. A total of 13% of pupils in the European Union learn German in lower secondary education, and 20% learn it at an upper secondary level.
Source
Not surprisingly do the Brits have a harder time learning a second language:
Despite the high rate of foreign language teaching in schools, the number of adults claiming to speak a foreign language is generally lower than might be expected. This is particularly true of native English speakers: in 2004 a British survey showed that only one in 10 UK workers could speak a foreign language. Less than 5% could count to 20 in a second language, for example. 80% said they could work abroad anyway, because "everyone speaks English." In 2001, a European Commission survey found that 65.9% of people in the UK spoke only their native tongue.
Source
I understand Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, English, French and German. And a bit of Latin.
That's not a fair question, for several reasons.
First of all, the United States educational system differs from most of the rest of the Western World in focus -- the United States tends to provide much broader education in general, and also much more focused on science and technology education. As a simple example, I have a number of UK-educated professional colleagues working in computer related disciplines who have never set foot in a mathematics classroom since the age of 12 or so. They focused -- and they were permitted by the educational system to focus -- on the arts, humanities, and literature to the virtual exclusions of math and technology. That wouldn't be permitted in the US public education system; almost everyone has to take both math and science to the age of 16, and there's no such thing as A-levels or similar aspects of "focus"; the graduation requirements are typically uniform within a district or school.
That isn't general for the rest of the Western World.: Both Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France and Germany have a "basic" school that everyone has to go through - I believe it is between 8-10 years. I'm not sure about Spain and Italy, but my guess is that they have basically the same as we do.
Similarly, most of the rest of the Western World tracks students to a much greater extent. I believe there are, for example, three different, official, state-sponsored forms of secondary education in the Netherlands. If you want to get in to university, you more or less have to be in the top track. American secondary education is designed in large part to provide a college-preparatory education to everyone, rather than a vocational or general education, while still meeting the overal (non-specialized) graduation requirements.
When American kids graduate from high school - their secondary education, they are usually around 18. 12 grades. For some, add to that, 4 years of college. That's a
lot of education time. What on Earth do they do with all that education time, if not become educated?
One of the things that gets lost in traditional college prep, at least in the States, is therefore the subjects that are traditionally part of general education, but not related to college entry requirements. For example, geography is usually displaced for history. Literature dominates over "communications," and the holy trinity of biology/chemistry/physics trumps other sciences or vocational skills. One can learn physics in secondary school, but not typically business or technology skills.
Yeah, but...with all those years of training, there must be some areas where American students excel. Cutting back on some areas must mean that they become far better than other countries' kids.
That is a good point. For a Frenchman to visit Italy is just a little bit tougher than for me to visit Utah. For ME to visit Italy it would to require several thousand dollars, a passport, several days of free time, and a desire to cram my body into one of those flying cattle cars they pass off as airplanes for hours and hours and hours on end.
A lot of people outside the US, forget how big this country is sometimes. There are a lot of places ouside of the US I'd liek to see, but we're a big country and there are a lot of places inside the US I'd like to see but never have seen, too. And travel inside the US is obviously easier. I think that's true of most Americans and accounts for why we don't travel outside of the country as much.
Do you know how many people from outside the US visit the US?
International visitors rose to 50.9 million in 2000.
More than half of last year's arrivals were overseas travelers (from countries other than Mexico and Canada). European visitors made up nearly half of this group, with Asians coming in next at almost 30 percent, and Latin Americans not far behind at 20 percent.
Visitors from the United Kingdom exceeded forecasts for 2000 with 4.7 million arrivals.
Japanese travelers comprised more than two-thirds of all Asian arrivals for 2000.
Nearly 3 million South American tourists made the United States their destination in 2000
For the first time since 1993, Australia made the top ten list for visitors to the United States, surpassing its 1997 record of half of a million visitors. Despite hosting the Olympics in 2000, Australian tourism to the United States grew by nearly 12 percent.
Arrivals from North America reached nearly 25 million.
In terms of travel receipts/exports, the U.S. ranks first among world-wide destinations. The United States' share of world travel receipts was 18 percent in 2000. Spending by international travelers to the United States is more than double the level for any other country.
Source
People from all over the world come to the US. But Americans don't come to the rest of the world.
