When did young Americans become so stupid?

[Maria]

I was watching a video where a dude was asking around mostly young Americans about basic geography and I was baffled by how dumb those people were, how can you not know what nationality someone from Amsterdam is? And Europeans not having computers? I'm not American so I don't know what causes this but I'm pretty sure that they teach geography in America, right? Please tell me they do.

[Punished Rusty Shackleford]

an unregulated interent was a mistake. That scene in Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty blackpilled me to believe that humans shouldn't be connected to each other as much as they are.

[Quillithe]

You watched a video full of either the dumbest people that got asked over an extended period, or in some cases just ones who were messing with the guy asking questions.

[Punished Rusty Shackleford]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

You watched a video full of either the dumbest people that got asked over an extended period, or in some cases just ones who were messing with the guy asking questions.

those "man on the street" vids are prime demoralization fodder. It's content for stupid people to laugh at other stupid people.

[Prinzip]

Originally posted by hi2315:

I was watching a video where a dude was asking around mostly young Americans about basic geography and I was baffled by how dumb those people were, how can you not know what nationality someone from Amsterdam is? And Europeans not having computers? I'm not American so I don't know what causes this but I'm pretty sure that they teach geography in America, right? Please tell me they do.

Go back to reddit. They too are often complaining how other people are dumber than them and brag about being the smartest avenger in the universe.

[videomike_Ultimate_Plushie]

I wasn't aware it was common practice for countries to randomly know the exact locations of individual cities within singular countries on another continent. Care to place the position of Denver on a world map? seriously what is up with the people that obsess over "why dont you know random cities in europe, American on the other side of the ocean!" How is this even remotely a viable judgement of education

[talemore]

Of course they do
https://youtu.be/3q_iqrvnC_4?si=M0jjkyJvkUFiNZm6

[Philco7a]

If you go to a McDonalds in the USA and your bill is $19.80 and you hand them a twenty dollar bill the 18yr olds today can not calculate the change in their heads.

[Immortalis]

First of all, geography is, and has always been pretty much hit and miss and not just in the USA.
Ask any European guy where a city like Phoenix or St. Louis is and to point it on a map and 9 out of 10 would not even say “the USA”.
Ditto for cities like Manila or Yokohama.
And that is true for every continent, the USA are hardly unique in that regard.

That being said, what you see in those kind of videos is the worst of the worst, the ones that are most likely to elicit a response from the viewers and therefore results in people watching the videos.
Would you watch, let alone enjoy, something called “can you guess where these cities are” if almost all the participants get it right the first time?

But if we want to have a general discussion about the state of the education, again, the USA is hardly unique in that you can easily observe the same pattern throughout every Western nation:
- a curriculum that is dead set on removing and ignoring any skill that might be even remotely useful in the real world (how many leave school with the knowledge of how to file their taxes? Or change a lightbulb? Or fix a leaking faucet?) and teach stuff that will be completely useless for 99% of the pupils and that would be best left to specialised higher education (how many of us have any real life use for differential equations? How often has someone asked you about the philosophy of Kant or Hegel during a job interview?);
- a general approach to history that, at best ignores the actual achievements of your country or anything that is close to us in time (how many among us have even touched the Cold War while at school, let alone anything that happened in the past 30 years?) and at worse seeks to actively rewrite that very history in an effort to “correct biased approach” by teaching pupils that their parents, grandparents and ancestors were really bad people because they supported racism, bigotism, misogyny and so forth;
- teachers that have by and large lost any interest in the actual job of teaching and simply clock their hours “today I have to spend 3 hours teaching this, doesn’t matter if they understand it faster or not at all, that’s the time allotted to the subject”. And the higher you look at the education ladder, the more disinterested the teachers actually are, reaching the point where tenured professors at university hardly even teach the students, leaving the job to some assistant while they spend their times working on the next book they’re going to publish (and add as a compulsory reading for their classes to ensure someone actually buys it).

And many, many more issues that ultimately results in people leaving schools with little knowledge that would actually serves them in the immediate future, let alone the course of their lives

[ナルゴ]

Lowering standards, because they don't want to admit that some students genuinely deserve to fail and repeat a year

[steven1mac]

I wouldn't take YouTube as a reliable source of information. If your wanting to know why America is lacking in proper education, you don't have to look past the No Child Left Behind policy, which ultimately means you have to teach at the level of the dumbest kid, so normal kids are not reaching their potential.

[Xautos]

Originally posted by SnakeFist:

So the op is lumping all americans together because of one youtube video. Yea makes total sense./s

it's a stereotype that people outside America see the American people as: Dumb, prideful and ignorant.

Funny thing is that in a lot of nations, even in mine in the UK you'll find the same type of nonsense with a small minority of people who are actually like that. The thing is that foreign media like to pick up on the worst aspects within that minority and broadcast it because it sells and then people believe every other American is like that.

[Punished Rusty Shackleford]

Originally posted by Xautos:

Originally posted by SnakeFist:

So the op is lumping all americans together because of one youtube video. Yea makes total sense./s

it's a stereotype that people outside America see the American people as: Dumb, prideful and ignorant.

Funny thing is that in a lot of nations, even in mine in the UK you'll find the same type of nonsense with a small minority of people who are actually like that. The thing is that foreign media like to pick up on the worst aspects within that minority and broadcast it because it sells and then people believe every other American is like that.

which is funny because we are told in the states to not be xenophobic and the people who are should be mocked BUT the people who attack the US or other countries are those xenophobic people from whatever country. So really you're just being mocked by a bunch of people who are below you regardless of what country you're from.

[Stop Having Kids]

https://youtu.be/g2oMv93EUpY?si=esZcG0K5v9SMtTS_

[videomike_Ultimate_Plushie]

Originally posted by Xautos:

Originally posted by SnakeFist:

So the op is lumping all americans together because of one youtube video. Yea makes total sense./s

it's a stereotype that people outside America see the American people as: Dumb, prideful and ignorant.

Funny thing is that in a lot of nations, even in mine in the UK you'll find the same type of nonsense with a small minority of people who are actually like that. The thing is that foreign media like to pick up on the worst aspects within that minority and broadcast it because it sells and then people believe every other American is like that.

A case of "you dont hate journelsts enough" indeed. Headliens for the sake of clickbaiting by use of stereotypes than an earnest examination of education that might require explaining why a european in Germany knowing the location of St.Lewis is somehow important

[Pippinhot]

Originally posted by primeinsurrection:

Originally posted by Lora Grim:

Look up the statistics for literacy rates in America. It's quite sobering.

BUT! You should take those "look at how stupid these people are!" videos with a pinch of salt, as it is within the content creator's best interest to show the dumbest of dumb for the sake of clicks.

The entire generation above you has been baffled by the stupidity this entire time. We have said it every single day. Its the first generation in human history to lower human intelligence and birth rates. A study has shown that 6/10 millennials cannot change a light bulb.

Meanwhile boomers wore full 3 piece suits to high school, took the country from poverty to a powerhouse, and had 99% marriage success rates. Yet millennials act like they are the idiots.

Yup, agreed. This is what happens when a country allows LGBT, DEI, and wokeness. It sets the country backwards. I am sure their intentions to promote fairness however that's not how you build a civilization.

Lack of morals led to the downfall of the society rings true.