zahid said:
Should a people this ignorant be running the world?
Perhaps more information should be given to support the claim, seeing as this is the part that has attracted much of the attention in this thread? Because I can't find that much here:
zahid said:
According to Department of Education National Adult Literacy Survey, There are fourty four million Americans who can not read and write above a fourth grade level- in other words, who are functional illiterates.
A deficiency in language does not demonstrate ignorance.
zahid said:
Majority of its citizens can not locate Kosovo (or any other country it has bombed) on the map. 65% of Americans adult between the age of 18 and 25 could not find the United Kingdom on the map. All that kissing American asses by Mr Blair, and American do not even know where the hell Mr Blairs lips were!
Being able to locate the exact position of countries is probably exaggerated, in terms of % of people who are able to do it. If you asked those same Americans to locate Europe, then I'd bet at least 80-90% would be able to. But knowing the EXACT location, shape and size of most countries is a skill/knowledge that most probably wouldn't have. Lack of this knowledge is again, not necessarily an indication of ignorance. I think you're being harsh here.
zahid said:
According to INS, 92% of Americans dont even own a passport. I guess they dont have to, 10,000 miles away from home, you are still in your home turf, speaking the same damn languages! Only a handful of them know any language other than English (and they barely speak that one!)
Not a direct link to either stupidity or ignorance.
zahid said:
Americans have quite a proud tradition of being represented by ignorant high-ranking officials. In 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nominee as ambassador to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was unable to identify either the country's prime minister or its capital during his senate confirmation hearing.
In 1982, President Ronald Regan's nominee for deputy secretary of state, William Clark, admitted to a wide ranging lack of knowledge about foreign affairs at his confirmation hearing.
Source: St. Petersburgh Times, july 21, 1989.
For the sake of comparison, how many foreign ambassadors can name off the top of their head, every single capital city in the world, as well as ever single prime minister/president? His lack of knowledge during the senate hearing would demonstrate arrogance, rather than comparative ignorance (unless you've got information that proves my insinuation in the last sentence to be incorrect.).
zahid said:
Recently a group of 556 seniors from fifty five prestigious American universities (e,g, Harvard, Yale and Stanford) were given a multi choice test consisting of questions that were described as 'high school level' Thirty four questions were asked. These top students could only answer 53% of them correctly. and only one student got them all right.
Is this direct proof of ignorance? No. Stupidity? Well, for a test consisting of questions based on information they probably have not encountered for 5+ years, I'd say they would've done well just to pass. If a doctor of particle physics was asked a few "high-school level" history questions, what are the odds that the physicist still had knowledge from classes all those years back? Remember, we're talking about
comparative stupidity/ignorance here.
zahid said:
A whopping 40 percent of these students didnt know when the American Civil war took place.
So I'm assuming that they were given a multiple choice question, with 4 choices. So if I asked Australian university students when the battle of Gallipoli began (a figure they may or may not have remembered from 5+ years ago in year 10), and gave them 4 choices-i.e.
A. 1914
B. 1915
C. 1916
D. 1917,
Would many more than 60% get it right?
zahid said:
The two questions the college seniors scored highest were 1. Who is snoop- dog (98% got them right) 2. Who are Bevis and Butt-head? (99% got them right)
Source: Pittsburgh post-gazette sept 03, 2000 and New York Times April 8, 2001
Again, if you asked Australian University students if they knew who Humphrey Bear or Skippy the Kangaroo was, would most of them get it right? This little piece of info, again, neither demonstrates comparative ignorance nor stupidity.
zahid said:
Yale or Harvard, Princeton or Dartmouth and Berkeley, get a degree from one of this university and you are set for life, 70% of those students at these fine schools had never heard of Voting Rights Act or President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Initiatives.
And here finally, is a support for the "ignorance" claim. Can you provide a few more pieces of evidence like this? The rest of your post that I haven't quoted goes into a different topic altogether, so there isn't any info. there to support this claim.
