Forums > Off Topic > The Chaser's War on Everything
Sciere (930961) on 1/10/2007 4:25 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
I don't know if it's old, but some of the answers gave me a chuckle.
This clip, taken from an Australian show "The Chaser's War On Everything" sees an interviewer heading out onto the streets in the US and asking very, very simple questions about politics and the world. After a while, he manages to convince many of them that he is John Howard and has them pointing to Australia to show where North Korea or France is.
Note: asking these questions in any country will likely yield similar results, no doubt.
nullnullnull (1463) on 1/10/2007 7:20 PM · Permalink · Report
Oh lord. Though I think it is unfiar to say Americans. There are a lot of stupid people out there.
nullnullnull (1463) on 1/10/2007 7:54 PM · Permalink · Report
I was just replying. No one in particular.
Indra was here (20752) on 1/10/2007 8:27 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
If you only knew how many times I was asked "Indonesia? Is it near Bali?".
...and people wonder why I want to bludgeon other people to the point of geographical detail...
Depends on the education system. (thank you catholic school) I remember having to memorize all the capital cites of the world when I was in Elementary school. So at least for people with similar educational background, we usually know AT LEAST WHICH FREAKIN CONTINENT A FREAKIN COUNTRY IS.
Riamus (8480) on 1/10/2007 8:33 PM · Permalink · Report
I had to memorize all of the capitals and countries of the world and point them out on a blank map (major rivers and other geographical features as well). However, memorization doesn't help you to remember things long-term, so I couldn't tell you the majority of that information any longer. Though I do know where Indonesia is. :)
Shoddyan (15006) on 1/11/2007 3:49 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Riamus wrote--]I had to memorize all of the capitals and countries of the world and point them out on a blank map (major rivers and other geographical features as well). However, memorization doesn't help you to remember things long-term, so I couldn't tell you the majority of that information any longer. Though I do know where Indonesia is. :) [/Q --end Riamus wrote--]
I managed to find a video of Riamus doing just that... :)
Ben K (23952) on 1/11/2007 12:06 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Hm, yes, questions such as "How many sides does a triangle have?" and "How many Eiffel Towers are there in Paris?" are REAL MINDBENDERS.
I love War on Everything - it's a pity that it's ended. Can't wait for the new series though. These guys do hilarious stuff - they used to publish a parody newspaper. Two of their better front page headlines:
Heading: HOWARD IGNORES THE PEOPLE
Subheading: So phone him at home on [John Howard's actual home phone number]
And, at the release of the fifth Harry Potter book, in unmissable bold print:
Heading: SIRIUS BLACK DIES
Subheading: Satirical paper ruins latest Harry Potter novel
Oh, their website is still up! It's mostly Aussie stuff though.
Oh, also, you can download full episodes from the show's website here.
Matt Neuteboom (976) on 1/12/2007 1:13 AM · Permalink · Report
Some points in America's defense:
1.) You would mostly see the same results in another country of the world. I don't think region has anything to do with it.
2.) You have to understand that they are only showing the ones that got them wrong. They aren't showing the ones that actually got it right, and I'm willing to bet that there was more people who got it right than wrong.
3.) They were in Texas.
I do have to beg the question: Do people from other countries have to learn American geography like the states and all that? I've never known.
Matt Neuteboom (976) on 1/12/2007 1:15 AM · Permalink · Report
BTW the show reminds me of Late Night with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report that we have here in the US.
Indra was here (20752) on 1/12/2007 3:10 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Matt Neuteboom wrote--] I do have to beg the question: Do people from other countries have to learn American geography like the states and all that? I've never known. [/Q --end Matt Neuteboom wrote--]
In my case, no. Just Washington D.C.
So, "foreigners" may not know that Washington State and Washington D.C. are 2 different places. At least I found that out AFTER arriving in Washington State. Doh.
My tropical biology is still dumbfounded why the distace between an Oregon blizzard and the California sun is only 2 hours away...
Riamus (8480) on 1/13/2007 1:29 PM · Permalink · Report
That depends where you are from. I hear Washington state called Washington all of the time as well. And I've been from all around the US (about 35% of the states). You hear it called Washington state as well, but I hear Washington equally as often. Just like I hear D.C. often instead of Washington D.C. or Washington.
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 1/19/2007 3:43 AM · Permalink · Report
I must say that from my experience, average US Americans demonstrated inferior knowledge of geography compared to Europeans.
But it's nothing compared to the Chinese. Their knowledge of geography is absolutely disastrous. Most of univeristy (!) students didn't know the most basic things about the location of countries. Australia being somewhere near Russia and Israel located in Central America were not the worst examples of their guesses.
On the other hand, an average Western person's knowledge about China's geography is also very weak. Many people in Europe can tell the difference between Texas and Florida, but hardly between Gansu and Jiangxi, for example.
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/25/2007 1:39 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Unicorn Lynx wrote--]On the other hand, an average Western person's knowledge about China's geography is also very weak. Many people in Europe can tell the difference between Texas and Florida, but hardly between Gansu and Jiangxi, for example. [/Q --end Unicorn Lynx wrote--]
A lot of Chinese people can't tell the difference between Taiwan and China. ;-)
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 1/25/2007 4:29 AM · Permalink · Report
That was a good one :)
Foxhack (32099) on 1/12/2007 6:27 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Ben Kosmina wrote--]Heading: SIRIUS BLACK DIES
Subheading: Satirical paper ruins latest Harry Potter novel
[/Q --end Ben Kosmina wrote--]I JUST BOUGHT THE BOOK YOU BASTARD! WAAAAAARGH!
(In other news, I finally submitted the Popeye game. :P_)
DarkBubble (342) on 1/18/2007 5:42 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Indra Depari of the Clan Depari wrote--]If you only knew how many times I was asked "Indonesia? Is it near Bali?". [/Q --end Indra Depari of the Clan Depari wrote--]
God, the food there alone was worth the 25+ hours on a plane. drools
Maw (832) on 1/18/2007 7:53 PM · Permalink · Report
Please don't remind me of the first couple of days after Half-Blood Prince's release, where pretty much every kid on the internet tried to make themselves look funny by splashing "SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE" in signatures, blogs, web sites, guestbooks, etc. It was perhaps the most widely-broadcasted spoiler in history.
Anyway, after research here are the national IQ levels.
Hong Kong 107
South Korea 106
Japan 105
Taiwan 104
Singapore 103
Austria 102
Germany 102
Italy 102
Netherlands 102
Sweden 101
Switzerland 101
Belgium 100
China 100
New Zealand 100
United Kingdom 100
Hungary 99
Poland 99
Australia 98 (here's us Kosmina)
Denmark 98
France 98
Norway 98
United States 98
Canada 97
Czech Republic 97
Finland 97
Spain 97
Argentina 96
Now you could argue that the IQ system is horribly flawed, that it tell you jack about how smart a person is, etc. I completely agree with you, but when you consider that all these countries were graded with an American IQ test I think there's at least some disparity.
But there are a lot of factors involved I guess. If a country has an oppressive government or religious doctrines you'd expect it to have a lower education. The same for countries where most of the population lives in rural areas rather than in cities. America (as a country) is rather self-sufficient at the moment, so its people might have earned their reputation as the world's dumbest tourists because they simply don't feel they NEED to learn about other countries.
And to even be on that list at all you can say that America is in the top 10% in terms of education levels.
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/18/2007 8:19 PM · Permalink · Report
IQ is quite isolated from real-world knowledge. I think that you would get very uninformed responses if you taped the same TV programme in those top-ranking Asian countries.
Riamus (8480) on 1/19/2007 12:06 AM · Permalink · Report
Even if IQ tests are not that good, the order doesn't really surprise me that much. Eastern Asian countries generally have better education than the US, as do many other countries around the world. If someone asked me what the leading countries in the world are for education before seeing this list, I'd choose Japan as #1 and probably Germany as #2 and I'd put US down around #10. I don't know what I'd guess for the other numbers, but that's about what I'd expect.
Slug Camargo (583) on 1/19/2007 2:23 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Riamus wrote--]Eastern Asian countries generally have better education than the US, as do many other countries around the world. If someone asked me what the leading countries in the world are for education before seeing this list, I'd choose Japan as #1 and probably Germany as #2[/Q --end Riamus wrote--] That said, Japan is also the place that invented -and made a rousing success of- violent-underage-tentacle-rape-porn comics and where you can buy soiled schoolgirl's underwear, so make of that what you will.
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/19/2007 2:30 PM · Permalink · Report
I will not question the Asian education systems when it comes to proficiency in maths, logic and natural sciences. But I have not received a good impression when it comes to humaniora, linguistics or social subjects. You can't judge the quality of a school system just by IQ tests, because that is only an approximation of a third of the subjects covered.
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 1/22/2007 3:54 AM · Permalink · Report
Pupils in People's Republic of China waste 50% of their time in schools to learn how to read and write. That takes several years, what with the 5000+ different characters you need to know when you come to highschool. The other 50% is spent on learning the prinicpiles of Marxism and Maoism. With so much "knowledge", no wonder they don't know where Australia is or who wrote "Hamlet".
Riamus (8480) on 1/22/2007 8:53 PM · Permalink · Report
Well, if the US spent 50% of its time on reading and writing, perhaps we wouldn't have high schoolers who couldn't read and write. :)
We do study it through high school and it is integrated (in many schools, but not all) in most other subjects, but I doubt you could say we spend 50% on it.
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 1/23/2007 12:25 AM · Permalink · Report
No wonder, you only have to memorize 26 letters and learn some spelling rules; the Chinese must deal with several thousands of different characters and their meanings. This requires years of enormous work, effort, and concentration. A first-grader must already know how to write simple sentences. It means that a 6-year-old child spends his time practicing drawing characters on special paper instead of learning where different countries are.
And anyway, for some Chinese there are only two countries in the world: China and Where Foreigners Come From :)
Riamus (8480) on 1/23/2007 10:55 PM · Permalink · Report
First graders here generally aren't taught countries. At most, they usually are only taught continents and perhaps a few specific countries that may be appropriate. Unless someone is from Zimbabwe, first graders aren't going to know where that is. :)
And I have to say that "some spelling rules" is a strong understatement. English spelling and grammar rules are so screwed up that there isn't anything simple about it and there are considerably more than "some" that need to be learned. There are a lot of words that cannot be spelled using ANY rules and are called "sight words" because you just need to know how they are spelled to get them right. I won't get into more detail because you're obviously a good writer, so you know at least the majority of this stuff. :)
Now, the little I understand of Chinese (I know more about Japanese, but still not a lot), many of those Kanji symbols are words in and of themselves, though they can be combined to form other words. That's true, right? How many words do Chinese first graders know, do you think? In the US, the average 5 year old will know at least 3000 words (even if they can't write all of them yet). From there, they will learn to write a lot of them throughout their schooling as they continue to learn 1500 or so new words per year (again, not necessarily how to write them). I'd be curious to find out how many words are in a Chinese dictionary compared to an English (American) dictionary.
Of course, I do find it interesting that there are young kids (5 and 6 years old) who are fluent in 10+ languages. Language can be taught much more easily to young children than to adults. I know that I'd have a much harder time learning Chinese or Japanese now than if I had tried learning it when I was a kid.
I think your last sentence is the clincher. I think that's more a factor in why there is such a lack of knowledge of the rest of the world than whether or not they spend time learning reading and writing.
Unicorn Lynx (181769) on 1/24/2007 3:43 AM · Permalink · Report
It's not that simple - one and the same "kanji" can have a lot of meanings, depending on what other characters it stands together. There are of course much more words than characters in Chinese language, because most of the words are combinations of two or more characters.
A first-grader must learn the characters even if he doesn't understand all or most of the words that are combined with their help. He is explained an approximate meaning of the character and is given a few examples. Then he must memorize the structure of the character by repeatedly writing it.
So learning Chinese characters is not exactly the same as learning to spell, or learning new words, or even learning both of them together. The main focus of character-learning is in the drawing. The children practice hours to get good-looking lines. Imagine a Western child spending a day repeatedly drawing the letter "a" until it looks really beautiful. It's a different kind of approach.
Игги Друге (46653) on 1/25/2007 1:38 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q)] Imagine a Western child spending a day repeatedly drawing the letter "a" until it looks really beautiful. It's a different kind of approach.[/Q] When I went to school, we drew us through the alphabet in one or two semesters. Indeed we spent one day perfecting the A, then the B, and so on. In third grade, we had to start over again in flowing script.
Matt Neuteboom (976) on 1/19/2007 3:54 AM · Permalink · Report
I'm not very big on the IQ idea. I have no idea what "average" really is anyway. All I know is that genius is somewhere around 150 or 160.
That said, Japan is also the place that invented -and made a rousing success of- violent-underage-tentacle-rape-porn comics and where you can buy soiled schoolgirl's underwear, so make of that what you will.
I cant believe I missed that while I was there.....errrrr......not that I was looking or anything.
D Michael (222) on 1/22/2007 5:14 PM · Permalink · Report
Agreed, I've taken many IQ tests and have ranged from 120 all the way to 165. That is just too big of a difference to regard IQ scoring as even remotely dependable.
Even giving everyone the same test may reveal little. One group of people might consistently outscore another, this is true. However, change the test up and the leading demographic may very well be on the bottom.
Roedie (5239) on 1/22/2007 3:12 PM · Permalink · Report
Yeah, I think you'd get similar results in most countries. In the Netherlands there used to be a TV Show called "de Vakantieman" (the Holiday Man). The host of the show would visit Dutch tourists in holiday resorts & on campsites in France, Spain etc. I remember that several of those tourists were unable to pinpoint their current location on a globe :->