Yet more proof that Americans are stupid as fuck...

[Master of Ossus]

Pfft as sad and deporable our Public schooling is...it's what you take from it.

Sure it produces morons but then again Georgetown gave me a freebie into their university because of my grades and I succeeded well enough.

Sure private school can steer you a tad easier but honestly unless the child wants something from it...short of downloading it directly into his noggin, she's not going to take it in.

This is part of why I resigned. I was getting students like that in an advanced class. Some of them were in my AP English Literature class, despite the considerable handicap of not speaking English! The history professors were also really ticked off about some of the students they had, but I'm pretty sure that all of them could point to America on a map. Most of them could probably find Iraq, too.

[Admiral Piett]

The one thing I want to know is how did they choose who to survey? American high schools accept all students, while most European ones have to be tested to be gotten into, according to a friend of mine from France. I've read studies suggesting that once the percentages are balanced out (i.e. the top x% of students are examined, where x is equal to the percentage of students accepted in other nations), the United States is not that poorly off compared to other nations. I'll look to see if I can find that study again, but it's been some time.

Well,at least in Italy it is not so.Are you sure?

[Tsyroc]

Ok, I need to explain/vent about this for a moment. Teachers WANT to teach their own subject area. Not only is it what they are well informed about, but it is also what they most enjoy doing. How would you like to get up in front of a room full of people and lecture and demonstrate on a subject you know next-to-nothing about? It is not a pleasurable experience.

Speaking as an instrumental music teacher who has been asked to teach subjects varying from history to floral design to computer technology, it is NOT the choice of the teacher to teach outside his or her content area. I personally find it insulting on behalf of the students when the school system decides to stretch the teachers it already has to cover all vacancies. Somehow, they can afford to give those in administration a 5% raise, but somehow can't afford to hire a sufficient number of teachers to cover all subject areas properly.

Yes, obviously it sucks when teachers are out of their element and art teachers are teaching geography (and it is a shame if you actually know of one who thought Brazil was in Asia), but they suck it up for the love of their students and what they do. It's incredibly hard for any decent teacher to think about students getting no education whatsoever, because that's the only alternative in those situations. Either those students get a second-rate education from someone who knows little on the subject area, or they get no education whatsoever.

Of course, if the school systems had more money to begin with, this would never be an issue. Reminds me of the bumper sticker about how nice it would be if the schools had more than enough money to do their thing (ie: educate students) and the government had to have bake sales in order to do its thing (ie: make weapons of mass destruction)...

Teaching just isn't worth the hassle in the U.S.. I've looked into it some here in Tucson and back in Iowa where I graduated from high school. In both cases I make more money as a pharmacy tech. So, college degree pays much less than on-the-job training and a high school diploma. Instead of putting up with kids, parents, school administrators, and dressing decent I get to wear pajamas (scrubs) supplied by the hospital and put up with nurses and pharmacy management.

[Malecoda]

Some teachers are just as bad as the students. A few teachers out there think Brazil is in Asia! And, despite being unqualified in the subject, end up teaching it anyway!

Ok, I need to explain/vent about this for a moment. Teachers WANT to teach their own subject area. Not only is it what they are well informed about, but it is also what they most enjoy doing. How would you like to get up in front of a room full of people and lecture and demonstrate on a subject you know next-to-nothing about? It is not a pleasurable experience.

I sympathized with this argument for a moment, then thought, How hard is it for an adult to make a lesson plan on high-school material? Jesus.

[Malecoda]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2491509.stm

Americans think the UK is in the middle east.

So, France doesn't know what El Nino is. Less than a third of Mexicans (OK, OK, I won't generalize the way Bastard just did-- ...who took the survey) know which way points west on a map, GREAT BRITAIN had less success locating the US than the US did, FRANCE beat ENGLAND in locating Russia, etc, etc. So fuck off.

[Zaia]

I sympathized with this argument for a moment, then thought, How hard is it for an adult to make a lesson plan on high-school material? Jesus.

No, of course it isn't difficult to make a lesson plan; however, take into consideration the fact that, if it isn't your subject area, you need to research every little thing you teach to make sure it's accurate before you incorporate it into your lesson. Then, you have to write up a lesson plan for every class of the day (some teachers teach as many as eights classes per day). Typing/writing up one lesson plan can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. For ONE. That's a hell of a lot of time to invest in something that ISN'T EVEN WHAT YOU FUCKING WANTED TO TEACH IN THE FIRST PLACE! Does this make sense yet, or do you still think we're all braindead morons who enjoy busting our asses for approximately $2 an hour?!!

Until you know how long it takes to write decent lesson plans and research topics you learned in school yourself years ago, kindly give me the benefit of the doubt and understand that teaching outside your content area is a major pain in the ass and very hard to do on a regular basis. If you calculate the number of hours a teacher spends in class teaching, out of class grading papers, writing lesson plans, and preparing for lessons/projects, most (high school) teachers work from 7am-9pm, every day of the week. They don't have TIME to do extra fucking research to teach an in-depth lesson on the civil war when they spent five years going to college to teach instrumental music, but sometimes they have to, and practically kill themselves in the process. You treat teachers as though they are beneath you when you casually dismiss the difficult job that they do, so back off.

[Malecoda]

Whoa, easy there. So my thinking wasn't as complete on this as I would like, I'll fess up to that, cool?

Now, what was I thinking? _____________________________________________________________

[Zaia]

Whoa, easy there. So my thinking wasn't as complete on this as I would like, I'll fess up to that, cool?

Now, what was I thinking?

That's fine. A lot of people jump to the same conclusions you did, though, and it upsets me because I know how much work teachers do and how little we get paid. I took it personally because you were talking about me, essentially.

[Cal Wright]

Amazing isn't it. You can be a fucking drug addict in hollywood and be worshipped. however if your a hard working respectable teacher you get screwed every day. pretty piss poor if you ask me. and i like how all of the foreing fucktards like to make fun of us. then if we say anything it gets thrown back in our face. I think im gonna pull a Chairface. get a laser, carve a picture of my ass on the moon, so i'd be shooting the moon in more ways than one, then write U. S. of fucking A under that. heh. heh. heh. devious. Evil Sadistic Bastard, I need to borrow your laser. Verilon, I need to borrow a dictionary. I can't speel worth shit.

[greenmm]

Broad generalization.

I also didn't see any hard information on where they got the information from. Did they do random exit polls at the airline gates? Did they ask every single American tourist that visited London over a set period of time? Did they conduct a poll that included Americans that have never visited London or the UK? Did they only ask London tourism guides who hate taking Americans on tours around the UK?

I'm sure Americans don't have the lock on stupidity in this world. There are plenty of English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Australian, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Somali, Bantu, Afrikaaner, and other national groups with their fair share of geography-impaired individuals.

[HemlockGrey]

There was no survey, period.