Why is the US the most powerful nation in the world?

[Che Gevara]

prez
My mistake
I just don't communicate with people very often in English...
Only here

Did you like the message ?
_________________
Bombing for peace is like f.. for virginity

[Prezbucky]

It's cool, dude, everyone messes up from time to time.

I just wanted to point it out in case it's something you're still learning (I figured you knew, but wanted to make sure).
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Che Gevara]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PIHphRDIMGo

Your president in my Country
_________________
Bombing for peace is like f.. for virginity

[Prezbucky]

Hey, do you know who Kaka Kaladze (sp?) is?
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Che Gevara]

Sure I do
He's a football player
Very late here 2 a.m tommorow have to get up early..
need to sleep
_________________
Bombing for peace is like f.. for virginity

[Prezbucky]

'ight, buenos noches.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Che Gevara]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WCoVaeYHzWA

Could anybody watch this vid and comment on last minute comments there....

Or you may just watch this part...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3IwXAF2hLTA&mode=related&search=
_________________
Bombing for peace is like f.. for virginity

[Jamie (K)]

The explanation is that a British comedy show went to the United States, had the host hang around places where he was likely to find ignorant people -- and he was probably good at identifying who would give him the stupidest answers (I'd be pretty good at it too) -- and then they edited out anyone who gave him intelligent, knowledgeable answers. Since they switch shots so often, it's easy to have the misimpression that they asked a LOT of people, but if you watch it again, you can see that they asked maybe 10 or 15 people and showed them over and over again answering different questions. Sometimes he also used trick questions, in which the answer was contained in the question, and the person just assumed that he must have been asking for different information. Anyway, I guarantee you that anyone on my street who is at least 16 years old would be able to answer any of those questions. Kids under 16 would be able to answer a lot of them.

And notice that the host had to show that map of Kyrgyzstan and explain to the British viewers where it is. Then, only after his viewers knew where it was, did he make sport of showing Americans who didn't know where it was.

It's easy to do this in any country. In Eastern Europe, in an ESL class, I gave a test on describing locations. I wrote the names of a bunch of famous cities on the board that I thought anyone with a 6th-grade education would be able to locate. Well, even though the students were well past the 5th grade, it turned out that they didn't know where most of the cities were. They didn't know, for example, the locations of Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Tokyo, Berlin, Amsterdam and quite a few others. It got so hopeless that I had to tell them just to draw imaginary maps, show the cities where they guessed them to be, and that if their descripions matched, I'd give them the points. Some of them didn't even know the location of cities that were only a couple of hours away from their homes, so one wrote that Munich was on the northern coast of Germany, across the Danube River from Hamburg. On their maps, they usually put Los Angeles where New York should be, and they generally thought Miami was in Brazil. And Buenos Aires could be in any country.

There was one man in the same town -- he was a bank employee -- who wanted to emigrate to the US, but he couldn't get a visa. Finally, he asked me if he could get a visa to South America more easily than to the US. I asked him what country, and he didn't seem to know any of them for sure. As I questioned him further, I discovered that he thought South America was somehow part of the United States, and that people there lived the same way. Many of the people there thought that North and South America form just one continent. Kids in school told me that the US had 51 states, but I told them it had only 50. When they told their geography teacher I'd said my country had only 50 states, she told them I was spouting nonsense.

I met a man in Germany who thought that, if shops in the United States are open 24 hours a day, then the employees have to work round the clock.

The irony of that whole video is that it would be extremely easy to play the same kind of trick on people in the United Kingdom, because that country also has a problem with not being able to bring considerable segments of its population up to a decent educational level. You get people there who come out of school unable to spell simple words like "with" correctly.

I should mention, Che, that you also often display some rather profound ignorance of countries you have never been to, so everybody's got that problem one way or another.

[Diverhank]

It's really funny! We have to be able to laugh at ourselves...

But then the rest of the world should think about this...we are so stupid but we kick everybody's butts in almost everything we do...what does that say how smart the rest of the world is? there you have it. Call me an ugly American, I don't care

[Alan]

Hi Jamie,

I agree that this kind of 'interviewing' is of no value and could be carried out in any part of the world to prove absolutely nothing. What intrigues me is that this film has been referred to as British. That was not the impression I got from the accent of the 'interviewer'.

Alan
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Here comes 2004...

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

I should also mention that in the US we do the same thing with people on the street. The host of a TV show, or his assistant, will go out and ask questions that almost everyone can answer to ignorant people on the street. Then they show all their stupid answers.

MTV used to go to Florida during spring break and ask drunk American students simple questions about politics or American history, and the students couldn't answer them. MTV also had a quiz show like this, and you could see that the contestants could answer the most obscure questions about old TV shows, but they couldn't identify the state of Iowa on a map or say who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

There was a show on another channel in which they asked many questions to similarly ignorant people, and the contestants had to bet on which idiot would get the answer right.

The difference is that, since we're all Americans, we look at those shows and say, "Ha, ha! Look how ignorant those people are!" Foreigners see the same interviews and say, "Look how ignorant AMERICANS are!" which I suppose shows how ignorant the foreigners are about Americans.

The current hit of this sort is called Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? In this case, the people answering the questions usually aren't stupid, but in fact are very well educated. The problem is that they don't remember some of the basic facts they learned as school children, and some of the facts about geography and science have changed. However, the children on the show usually know the answers. The top prize is a million dollars, and so far I think nobody has won it. A few weeks ago they had a woman on who was not nearly as ignorant as the people in the clips that Che posted, and she lasted about 10 or 15 minutes. I was astounded that she didn't even know where the United Nations was located, which is something almost any American 10-year-old knows.

You can watch parts of the show and try some of the questions here: http://www.fox.com/areyousmarter/

[Jamie (K)]

Oh, yeah. And in Romania I met a teacher who was afraid she wouldn't know what to do in an American restaurant. I thought she meant that she didn't know correct American table manners, but after asking a few questions, I found out she thought that most American restaurants have no staff and are "operated completely by machine!"

One American met some people in Russia who thought that every inch of the United States was covered with skyscrapers. From coast to coast, nothing but skyscrapers.

[Prezbucky]

Imagine that -- skyscrapers in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, etc.
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Conchita]