<p>Not trying to insult anyone at all, but what is going on with this country? </p>
<p>Is this just a small minority of the population or is it common?</p>
<p>I also want to make it clear that I am not at all trying to insult anyone. Recent events (such as the shootings), and then watching this completely surprised me. I want to know what you guys think…is this uncommon? Or does this surprise you as well? Should there be more emphasis placed on higher education? In essence, what is going on!? It surprises me that some people don’t even know how many world wars there were…</p>
<p>I’m just looking for answers. Please believe me, it was not my intention to offend anyone if you feel that way.</p>
<p>Sent from my SGH-T959V using CC</p>
<p>How are you just seeing this for the first time? It’s over 5 years old.</p>
<p>Just because a select few Americans weren’t able to answer those questions doesn’t make the whole nation stupid. The people shown in that video make up like .0000000001% of America.</p>
<p>Also - [British</a> are also NOT stupid - WITH SUBTITLES - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_mkwB9ayK4]British”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_mkwB9ayK4)</p>
<p>and </p>
<p>[Germans</a> are also NOT stupid - WITH SUBTITLES - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_396862&feature=iv&src_vid=w_mkwB9ayK4&v=ONCrE4IoSsY]Germans”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_396862&feature=iv&src_vid=w_mkwB9ayK4&v=ONCrE4IoSsY)</p>
<p>I’m sure there were people who got the questions right, but if the video maker showed those it wouldn’t make a very entertaining video, would it?</p>
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<p>What does one person being mentally ill have to do with the other video, which is about intelligence?</p>
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<p>The amount of kids getting higher education is already rapidly increasing. When our parents were kids, it wasn’t uncommon at all for kids to stop education after high school and go straight to work. Obviously the times have changed as more and more kids are going to college and even grad school these days.</p>
<p>There was a mass shooting in Norway last year. God, Norwegians are all stupid. </p>
<p>Yeah, that sounded insensitive, didn’t it.</p>
<p>I’m impressed by the extensive editing, small sample size, and sampling bias.</p>
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<p>Don’t confuse geography trivia with higher education.</p>
<p>those people seemed pretty smart. i wouldn’t expect them to remember much of what they learned in high school, or to keep up with world politics. that’s like a waste of time.</p>
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<p>Don’t confuse trivia with common sense.</p>
<p>why do you think those questions were common-sense questions as opposed to trivia questions?</p>
<p>they seemed more like trivia questions to me from what my short term memory remembers.</p>
<p>Some of you guys are missing what I’m wondering. Obviously I realize that there was editing and a small sample-even still, there are some questions people in a country like America should not get wrong.</p>
<p>And I didn’t mean to imply that there was a correlation between the two incidents; there was an “emotional” correlation for me, which is what I was trying to say.</p>
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<p>The ones in the British video were more common sense I guess.</p>
<p>People should know how many colors are on their own flag, what currency their country uses, etc.</p>
<p>@Enfield, </p>
<p>Common sense is knowing that “Kentucky Fried Chicken” originated in…Kentucky.</p>
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<p>There are over 300 million people in America. It’s easy to slip in the cracks and not learn or forget somethings from school. It’s also easy not to keep up with current events. Don’t extrapolate too much from the video.</p>
<p>Lol as someone who is in Journalism I see what they did here. They went to a location, where umm let’s just say a place where you don’t see people in suits and nice clothes walking around. They do this because they want views. There were probably more people who got answers right but they edited them out. They also probably looked for people who didn’t look “smart”. Nothing bad.</p>
<p>IceQube,</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong - I completely understand that the majority of people will know the answer to almost all of these questions. However, I seem to recall my APUSH teacher mentioning a survey of college students which indicated that only a few percent knew the years that the civil war occurred. Keep in mind that these kids had just graduate from high school. This video just brought back that memory which is why I made this post. I recognize that most Americans are very intelligent.</p>
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<p>Why do you find it alarming that they don’t know such a trivial fact?</p>
<p>i think because he thinks most Americans are ‘very intelligent’ and would have answered those questions in the video much better than the people in the video did :p</p>
<p>yeah, you didn’t have to know facts to answer some questions. those were common-sense. but a lot of them weren’t like that.</p>
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<p>You nailed it. </p>
<p>Awaiting rejoinder from bioboy12</p>
<p>I just find it surprising that they may not know something that, to me at least, is as basic as 2 + 2 = 4.</p>
<p>Doesn’t it make you wonder what they learned in high school then? Sure you might argue that it’s not important to know such trivial facts, but this also hints to an underlying idea that makes you question what is being taught/learnt in their schools. History may not seem important, but it may correlate to a lack of knowledge in other subjects as well. I do realize I might be wrong which is why I included the “may”.</p>
<p>Also, just pointing out that I always like friendly discussions, so let’s keep it that way. :)</p>
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<p>Again, you’re extrapolating too much from the weak data presented by the video. Notice how the video goes back to the same people, over and over again. Those are the people who don’t know, and those are the people the video hammers, and those are the people who supposedly represent America. I can’t take your argument seriously because it’s based on such a flawed premise :).</p>
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<p>As you said, all we can do is speculate. Go ahead and wonder. Go ahead and extrapolate to the nth term. I wouldn’t advise that you draw conclusions though. Here, I’ll even get you started. </p>
<ol>
<li>People in a video don’t know answers to history, geography, and current event questions.</li>
<li>These people represent America. </li>
<li>Not knowing history means that one is deficient in math knowledge.</li>
<li>Being deficient in math knowledge means that one will inevitably fail in life.
4a. Who doesn’t use math? Don’t we have to add and subtract at the grocery store? At the restaurant?</li>
<li>Not being able to do math quickly at the restaurant makes one socially awkward.
5a. It’s so nerdy to pull out a calculator in a restaurant!</li>
<li>People start suffering from low self-esteem.</li>
<li>People start become recluses. </li>
<li>Restaurants fail because no one will attend because people can’t do math and there is a strong stigma attached to calculator usage in restaurants.</li>
<li>Because restaurants fail, demand for beef will fall.</li>
<li>Cows will explode in population size.</li>
<li>Cows will inherit the Earth.</li>
</ol>
<p>wait i thought high school was just to habituate the population to long days of tedium, so they wouldn’t protest working equally long hours for a little bits of money.</p>
<p>oh yeah and to keep the population out of trouble. </p>
<p>learning is awesome. but learning has always happened outside of the classroom more often than it does in it … especially nowadays. </p>
<p>of course private schools for intelligent students are an exception. in those schools learning happens because those kids are being prepared for intellectual activities when they get older, not tedious jobs.</p>