Wake Up Little US-ie

[SoCalDem]

It's a given that most of Americans have NO CLUE as to where they fit into the world as a whole. We have been "jingo-ed" into actually believing that we are all-powerful,all-knowing, and just a whole lot smarter than almost everyone else on earth.

Just because we consume more, and are relatively protected by two friendly neighbors and a whole lot of water, does not insulate us from being citizens of the world.

We know very little about the world.

The time has come for parents who claim that they love their kids, to STAND UP , and DEMAND that their kids be taught world history.. We need a crash course, and we need it YESTERDAY. It's nice to know about all the cute anecdotes about the cherry tree, and the returned penny, and the crossing of the Delaware...and all the other things that kids are taught....but they NEED to know about the world...as it is NOW.. Their lives may (and probably WILL) depend on it.

No doubt, there will be some who will be afraid that they might be taught a skewed version of that history, and that may actually happen, but every effort needs to be made to start taking the rest of the world seriously. For school districts , it should not be too difficult to present several courses of study that would , in the end, present a balanced vision of what lies beyond our shores.

The youngsters who navigate through our school systems, on average, leave it virtually unschooled. Some can read, and do basic math, but other than the ones who go on to college, most are prepared for very little that will make them a productive citizen of the world. We can no longer afford the luxury of undereducated kids.

Uneducated people fall prey to nationalistic fervor, and the problems that accompany that line of thinking. It's two or three decades of this nonsense that has brought us to the pivot point we are precariously perched upon. Every day, I hear people talking about "the war" or "the Arabs" or "the soldiers". When asked for their opinions on any of those subjects, they seem to have no original thought about any of it. They are only able to parrot phrases that they have heard. When pressed to explain what they have just said, they cannot. Anger usually ensues, and they leave, content that they are "right".. Right about what?? They don't even know WHY they are saying what they say. They have NO context on which to base any of their own comments.

I hear people just yuk it up when they talk about "Jay-Walking", and how college educated people think that we got our independence from France, or how they think that Germany was our ally in WWII. How can this be funny? I know that these are the ones who got it wrong, and that's WHY they are in the piece, but the message it sends, is this... It's "cute" to be dumb....and people will like you more if you are not an "egg-head".

George W Bush, or the next president, or the next, or the next will NOT "win the war on terrorism", and our kids, and probably THEIR kids will be dealing with this nasty tactic . The days of conventional warfare are OVER. As long as there are unhappy people who would rather DIE than live, because their lives are SHIT, we will hear from them in the only way they can get our attention.. They do not have (or need) tanks,planes, battleships,massive armies or even actual countries. Cheap explosives and their own bodies are all they need.

While we were "sleeping", the world has lapsed back into tribalism, and religious zealotry. Our children MUST be prepared to live in this world.

If your schools are NOT teaching them about the world, YOU must. They need to know and it's even OK if it scares them. The world is a scary place now, and being afraid is NO reason to hide from the truth.

If parents think back to the fairy tales they read to their children, they might wonder why such gruesome stories were actually even considered "children's stories", but if one looks at the historical times during which most of the famous ones were written, it's easy to see that times were not that great then either. Maybe those tales were a way of parents conveying "news of the day" in a way that even small kids could grasp .

There are a lot of hungry, angry, and ignored people "out there" in the rest of the world, and they are DEMANDING our attention. We can no longer claim "adolescent" ignorance , go fill up our SUV and go shopping.

We claimed dominance, and it's time that our citizens start acting like they are part of the world. It is much cheaper and safer to make friends, than it is to make enemies. This is NOT appeasement. It is common sense. We all share the same planet, and except for an accident of geography, we could be the ones without.

[Fenris]

1. I love you, SoCalDem!

Your posts are consistently great. And your PS skills are amazing. The toofy cat avatar makes me smile every time I see it.

:hi:From a far inferior fan.:)

[SoCalDem]

2. Thanks.... (but)..My PS skills are limited to "larger/smaller"

I am sad to say.. I "borrow" a lot....but then I use my own bandwidth :):)</angel>

[Fenris]

4. Hey, there's nothing wrong with borrowing

Still, I love the toofy cat.:)

[Solon]

3. Nationalism is taught in schools...

I guess I was lucky, my Mother told me that schools give the basics, and encouraged me to discover on my own. I will say that now is a good time to educate all Americans on the past and our role in the world. We are not the Leader of the World, that is jingoistic and flat out wrong, yet we are taught that myth along with others. We need to make Americans more aware of how are actions are viewed in the world.

[SoCalDem]

5. I can still remember how "brilliant" Manifest Destiny

was thought to be, and how much time we spent on it in school.. Luckily for me, I had a teacher in high school, who told us how it really was.. I am afraid that with all the extra demands made on teachers these days, that Lots of them are "just going through the motions"..

They say that those who do not KNOW the past, are doomed to repeat it, and that is becoming ever-more apparent. :(

and about the fact that your parents encouraged you to study on your own...mine did too..but there are more parents these days who rarely even SEE their kids, except to toss dinner to them, and then start the nightly rounds of "take a bath..go to bed.."..

I was lucky.. I was able to stay home, and when my kids came home, they always did their homework right when they got home..and we always watched the news in our house, but it was scary that MY kids seemed to be the only ones who knew "real" things..

I can still recall when Sadat was assassinated.. We watched it on CNN, and had to leave soon after to the bowling alley.. My son was 4 years old..

Anyway, when we got there, the guy at the front desk was flipping channels, because all the stations had the assassination on, and he was pissed.. My son, said.."It's on all the channels.. Sadat was assassinated this morning".. The guy looked at him and said "Who?"..

My son looked up at him and said .."Sadat, the president of Egypt".. Everyone's jaws dropped.. that a 4 yr old knew what was going on , and they did not..

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. You're on a roll, SoCalDem!

Having taught elementary Japanese to eleven classes of college freshman, I can confirm that there's an appalling amount of ignorance about the larger world out there, and even more appalling, a lack of curiosity. Ignorance is forgivable if you haven't had the opportunities to learn. Lack of curiosity is sheer laziness.

I always had a couple of foreign students in my classes, and the American students mostly avoided them.

Every month, one nationality group of foreign students cooked a meal and gave a presentation on their country. The first thirty people who signed up could attend free. The food was always excellent, and the students were frequently very creative in presenting their native cultures. I and about a dozen other faculty members with international experience were "regulars," and most of the rest of the spaces were taken up by other foreign students.

Recruiting even affluent students for the college's very affordable study abroad programs (they could use their financial aid and spend a semester in one of six foreign countries for the same price as studying on campus) was an annual chore, even though the students who actually went on the programs came back raving about how it was the best thing they'd ever done.

Free foreign films were shown on campus once a month. Almost the only students who went were those who were required to do so for a class. The audience was made up mostly of faculty and townspeople. When Juzo Itami's The Funeral was shown, I required my classes to go see it. They thought it was "gross" to have a movie about a funeral. No notion of being interested in a film that details Japanese funeral customs in the course of some sharp social satire about clueless yuppies, Japanese-style.

I once asked a group of students why they didn't go to the foreign films. They said that they lived such "stressful lives" that they needed to see something that didn't require any thinking. One of them even said that only "those posers who talk about watching PBS go to foreign films, and they don't really like them, they just say they do so people will think they're sophisticated."

This "ignorant AND PROUD OF IT!" attitude is one of the things that I like least about American culture.

And I'll probably be branded an effete intellectual snob for saying so.

[SoCalDem]

7. My youngest went to Florence Italy for a semester abroad

and some of his fellow students mocked him , as a "kiss-ass", when his pencil drawing was on the cover of their "magazine".. He has some gorgeous sketches from his time there.. Of course he went for the "soccer" as much as anything, but he immersed himself into the culture and bought a bicycle..(gave it to the landlord's kid when he left)..

He traveled all over Europe (his fave was Budapest), while most of the other students were more interested in getting drunk and sleeping it off.

Of course he is MY son, so he was very interested in their politics, and I think he acquitted himself well.. He has some latin blood in him, so maybe he fitted in better than some of his classmates.:)

[rpannier]

8. Unfortunately the Japanese are

also part of the problem. Like the Americans they deny many things that they have done. They FLAT OUT DENY that they brutally oppressed the Koreans (I live in Korea and what the Japanese did to the Koreans make the NAZI's look weak and pleasant). Unfortunately, every culture has their xenophobes and unenlightened. But to enlighten someone means you have to meet them half-way and encourage others to understand your view.
Most liberals I know don't do that very well. They tend to see things from their point of view and talk to those who disagree like they're stupid. Now, I know many will say that the right does it too. But, I don't think we should be adopting the practices of the right. When we disagree, make an attempt to let the other side know you see their point-of-view and finds places you agree with them on. I find this much easier to sway opinion.

[SoCalDem]

9. Agreed.. We all need to GROW UP..

Lay all the cards on the table.. even the UGLY ones..and TRY to come to some kind of accomodation..

Every culture/country has some nasty stuff in their past (and present). If there is never a rapprochement, there will always be recrimination. We need a mass apology, and a global promise to TRY to see things from all sides.

This may be terrible to say, but I sure wish we had more mothers in charge of countries.. I know that (some) women can be just as brutal as (some) men, but the mediator/mom in me, tells me that things might be better if we had our turn at things :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. You don't have to tell me about Japanese atrocities

since I even translated a book about them. You don't have to inform me that there are stupid people in Japan. I've met several of them.

But today's average Japanese person knows much more about the world than the average American. Their news media have much more international news, they read foreign literature and see foreign films (not just American), and their educational TV station offers foreign language courses, including Chinese and Korean (the dismal results are due to shyness and perfectionism).

They may be awkward in individual encounters with foreigners, but they're very aware of what is going on in the world.

[Demonaut]

11. Man, that's a good post, I've felt that way for years, arrogance and

ignorance are all too often the largest export of this country.

[SoCalDem]

12. It's too bad that more Americans do not actually travel

to other places.. I read a while back that only 7% of Americans even have passports. When you consider that a lot of that 7% are probably naturalized citizens, it really means that 93+ % have only been to Canada, Mexico or some places in the Caribbean, IF they have left the US at all..

It's impossible to imagine that others have a different perspective, if you have never left your own country..

[Demonaut]

13. kick

deserves a fresher crowd

[Brewman_Jax]

14. You're quite right

ignorance is cheap and easy. Thinking beyond one's nose is hard.

Some of the threads and posts on DU would be more at home on FR. Some want a Disneyland/rated G country for their kids (tho' the act that created them is HARDLY rated G).

Some want a theocracy of their denomination because they're so "persecuted" by secular society. :scared:

Some want to go back to the 50's where all of "those" people (enter marginalized group) knew their "place," which is out of the public eye and not fighting for their civil rights. But they STILL have to pay taxes to support a society that refuses to serve them.

US history is so sanitized that most people don't know the reason the HBCU's exist in the first place, but they scream "racism" at the college admissions offices using race as an admission category. (I read the articles and LTTE in this week's Atlanta Journal-Constitution (www.ajc.com))

It makes me wonder if we'll grow up. I'd like to think so.

We have got to become world citizens, because the world has gotten much smaller.

Thanks for letting me add to this. I don't have long posts too often. :-)

[SoCalDem]

17. "Add" away.. We need MORE thoughtful posts here

You hit on the kids angle, and that's the one thing we are doing so poorly.. We do not prepare our kids for the real world..

I see more and more 20-somethings that have that "kicked in the stomach" look in their eyes.. They thought they would "grow up" and everything would be FUN.. They would have a nice car, a nice apartment..all they have found is boring work, crappy apartments, and no money.. It's no wonder they are "mad" .. They bought into the tv-land dreams.. Dreams are fine, but they don't pay the bills ...

My mother-in-law always used to criticize me for making my boys watch the news (CNN was actually quite different then), but these three grown "boys" are quite aware of what's happening in the world, and they have a grasp of what's important and what's not..

Gullibility, anger and jingoism is a dangerous mix...and that seems to be infecting a lot of young people these days..

[Bandit]

15. What do you call someone who speaks three or more languages?

Multi-lingual. what do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bi-lingual. What do you call someone who only speaks one language? American

[bobbieinok]

16. my experience in Germany

When I speak German, some recognize that my native language is English and say 'You come from England, right?'

When I say I come from US and learned German in US, they don't believe me.

Everyone knows Americans can't speak foreign languages.

[hatrack]

18. Cultures are durable institutions

They can survive many kinds of catastrophic events - war, invasion and occupation (as post WWII Germany and Japan showed); horrific repression and mass murder at the hands of fanatical, ignorant governments (Cambodia, Russia and the PRC come to mind); and even physical dispersion after war, invasion, repression AND mass murder (as shown by the survival of Jewish culture after the Disapora).

The one thing (aside from an Easter Island-ish ecological collapse) that a culture cannot withstand is the willing, loving embrace of ignorance.

[Cleita]

19. American schools do not teach children about other places in the

world and the people who live in them. They aren't even taught about their own country that much. When I went to school in Chile for a few years, it was part of the curriculum to learn about the world and it's people and their histories. I wasn't taught anything like this here except for the usual European slanted "world history" and American history classes and most of it about wars and not much of anything else.

Traveling around the Western part of this country has yielded huge surprises about geography and ethnicity in this country that one never gets in their school history books let alone the whole world. I think we have too big an emphasis on sports and should be using that time to exercise the mind as well as the body.

[SoCalDem]

20. The only thing we were "taught" about "Indians"

was covered in the ..opening (such a bland, benign term) of the west..and the french-indian wars..

And the only "good" ones seemed to be women.. Sacagawea & Pocahantas..the men were the "dangerous warriors" who only wanted to steal white women..

We never even heard the term Native Americans.. In grade school, it was pretty much a given, that they were pretty much "place-holders", who were just part of the background story of the magnificence of exploration and dominance of this continent.. A mere trifle, to be tossed aside, and never bothered with again..

I hope it's changed now, but I wouldn't count on it :(

[Cleita]

21. I think it's worse.

You mentioned Jay-walking and I think it speaks a lot about how ignorant the common American is. They aren't getting basic knowledge, they should have gotten in elementary school, even in college.