im american and i knew that like in kindergarten so i think some of you are just stupid sorry
“US curriculums don’t talk about-” ok? And? Are you guys not absorbing literally any information from the outside world? Tv, movies, books, people talking around you? Hello????
I’m sorry do people need to be taught that other countries have metropolitan cities in school or is that information you can kinda infer from like. existing in real life
Absurd that people will just say shit like this with their whole chest. If I had somehow gotten through life to age 21 believing that my country had cities but my silly primitive sepia-toned neighbours didn’t then when contrary information came up I’d keep my mouth shut and head right to wikipedia. I’d take that misconception to the fucking grave.
For USAmericans who care to listen; the issue here is not that you were never taught or exposed to facts about the world but rather that ignorance is used as a shield for criticism. This is considered a dick move as you’re basically saying you know you’re ignorant, you’re saying you don’t want to learn.
If you’re older than fifteen and not currently trapped in or recently escaped from a very overbearing cult then “I wasn’t taught that at school” isn’t an excuse for beliefs that reveal that you fundamentally don’t think of other places as real or important. “It wouldn’t occur to me to put ‘USA’ on my address for international shipping because I just expect everyone in other countries to know where my state is even though I don’t know theirs” “I just assumed that other countries on my continent wouldn’t have cities for some reason” “naturally I just assume that having states is a US thing and other countries either don’t have them or they don’t mean anything, other places don’t have regional differences like we do, we’re so varied and everywhere else is a Country Of Hats” THIS IS A YOU PROBLEM. We all have shitty education systems, yours isn’t special. We all have racist governments and nationalist propoganda machines, yours isn’t special. Your American exceptionalism isn’t suddenly cute and humble if you try to make it about your country being extra bad instead of extra good. You just learned you made a stupid assumption due to inherent racist or nationalist or whatever beliefs? Now you have better information. Maybe think QUIETLY TO YOURSELF about what other dumb assumptions you have because of that and spend some time on wikipedia or watching foreign movies or something instead of crying to the internet that it’s your fourth grade teacher’s fault for not making you memorise a list of foreign cities.
We all believe dumb shit and don’t know anything. You think I know anything about your states? I don’t. When people from non-English-speaking countries started buying my books online I couldn’t understand the address formats to post them; I had to learn. I don’t automatically know which countries in the world are larger than mine, I look up the info if I need it. Sometimes I say make a bad assumption and dumb shit and people are like “Derin what you said is wrong actually” and tell me otherwise and then I learn that. This is not an issue of having information. Everyone can be wrong about stuff, but your “uphill in the snow both ways” ranting about how nobody should expect better from you because Your Uniquely Bad Culture And Schooling is at fault for every problem is getting old.
Y'all don’t seem to understand that, for a lot of Americans, the first time they experience truly global thinking is University.
That’s why Universities are so dangerous to certain political factions.
It’s not rocket science, but education is IMPORTANT and not all educations are created the same. I would encourage you to try to understand that an alarming % of the USA is illiterate or has a very low level of education. That’s not necessarily their fault.
Be kind. Understand that the world SUCKS and some people need a little help seeing that the world is this huge, complicated, interconnected machine that runs BETTER with kindness.
What Americans leaving comments like this think they sound like:
What they actually sound like:
You know, I remember Geography class back then. We covered the whole world continent by continent, talking about the social, natural, political, mathematical geography of all those regions. Yes it was all shoved into a single year and the whole year after that was just national geography, and we may have kind of skipped Oceania because the year ended before we could get to it, but we still covered the world. Does the United States truly just not have that in the curriculum?
I’ve taken a random state to serve as an example, the first I poked on the map, Colorado.
So my question is: How do you “investigate other cultures and how they have been influenced by the climate, physical geography, and cultures of an area” while also “examine geographic concepts through the lens of multiple diverse perspectives from various regions of the world and with consideration for indigenous, dominant, and marginalized populations” without realizing that there are metropolitan cities in Mexico??
I get that teachers are underpaid, but your books are surely required to include all this stuff. Not to mention that large cities (like those in Mexico!!) are in fact clearly labeled on world and North America maps, which you’ve hopefully at some point in your life looked at for more than 2 minutes.
I can get why your education system would leave you unable to recognize different African countries or something, but this is just a crazy thing to get wrong until you’re 21.
A bunch of quotes from the standards below:
According to the Colorado Academic Standards for Social Studies designed and published by the Colorado Department of Education:
“SOCIAL STUDIES Sixth Grade, Standard 2. Geography
Evidence Outcomes
Students Can:
a. Classify and analyze the types of human and geographic connections between places and regions.
b. Identify physical features of the Western Hemisphere and explain their effects on people who reside in those regions.
c. Analyze positive and negative interactions of human and physical systems in the Western Hemisphere and give examples of how people have adapted to and modified their physical environment.
d. Use characteristics to define physical and political regions of the past and present.”
And at higher levels:
“SOCIAL STUDIES High School, Standard 2. Geography
Prepared Graduates:
Examine the characteristics of places and regions, and the changing nature among geographic and human interactions.
Grade Level Expectation:
3. Investigate patterns of the interconnected nature of the world, its people, and places.
Evidence Outcomes
Students Can: a. Explain how the uneven distribution of resources in the world can lead to conflict, competition, or cooperation among nations, regions, and cultural groups.
b. Explain how shifts in the world’s population are connected to and dependent upon other people for both human and natural resources.
c. Explain how migration of people and movement of goods and ideas can contribute to and enrich cultures, but also create tensions.
d. Analyze how culture, and cooperation and conflict influence both the division and unification of Earth. For example: International agreements, political patterns, national boundaries, and how cultural differences and conflict over land may lead to genocide.
e. Make predictions and draw conclusions about the positive and negative global impact of cultural diffusion and assimilation. For example: Human rights, language, religion, and ethnicity.
f. Examine geographic concepts through the lens of multiple diverse perspectives from various regions of the world and with consideration for indigenous, dominant, and marginalized populations. Including but not limited to: Indigenous Peoples in Colorado, Christians in the Middle East, the Uyghurs in China, and tribal groups in Afghanistan.”
These standards include a lot of other stuff at other levels, but you get the idea. Additionally:
“Seventh Grade
[…]
Students Can:
a. Determine how physical and political features impact cultural diffusion and regional differences. For example: Modern environmental issues, cultural patterns, trade barriers, and economic interdependence.
[…]
5. What are different ways to define regions in the Eastern Hemisphere based on human and physical systems as they change over time?
6. How has globalization changed the ways people in the Eastern Hemisphere interact with places and their environment?”
