So a while back, I was talking with my white friends and somehow I brought up the Falklands war cause I deemed it relevant.
I was surprised when absolutely none of them knew what the fuck I was talking about.
I am a Mexican immigrant, and knew about the conflict thanks to watching latin american natgeo back when I still went to school there, and pretty much, any read person in Mexico my age an older knew that the conflict had at least happened.
Me and my friends were all 21, and it got me thinking about the fact that people around this age, and older, probably don't know about a lot conflicts that occurred as recent as 40 years ago, like say the Sino-Vietnamese War.
What do you think /his/, was it just my friends being dumb, or is it linked to lack of foreign cultural and political knowledge by college educated americans? similar to what happened during the early days of the cold war
>>1190133
most Americans haven't heard of the Falklands war. I only found out partly because I was always interested in history and partly because I'm a BR and it's a great way to piss off Argentinians
this isn't even exclusive to America, most Anglophone countries are completely disinterested in history that doesn't directly involve them somehow and don't bother to teach it or learn it unless they're nerds. the only reason America stands out in this regard is because America is a relatively young country with a relatively short history. Brits are more educated, but that's only because they have a longer history than America and because much of European history is fundamentally intertwined with Britain - the vast majority of Brits couldn't tell you a single thing about the Franco-Prussian war, for example.
Australians are by far the worst though, for obvious reasons
>>1190208
what do you mean?
>>1190133
They don't teach it in school so you'd never know it unless you researched it yourself. Very few people research much of anything themselves.
I know lots of people whose entire knowledge of world war 1 is that it came before world war 2.
>>1190224
Australians are by far the most ignorant people on earth when it comes to general knowledge of history. I was born in the United States but attended an Australian secondary school. History class itself was disjointed and only covered Australian history until WE WUZ GALLIPOLLI. Barely a mention of the Roman Empire, and that was in a mandatory semester of Latin we had to take. No mention of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance. We talked a little about the French Revolution in 10th grade, but no Napoleon at all. But even that doesn't excuse the level of individual ignorance seemingly endemic to Australia.
I've witnessed the equivalent of AP history students asking if the United States invaded Europe in World War 2. I once tried to explain what capitalism was to a 13 year old and he seemed completely uncapable of understanding me, as if I had ventured into Plato's cave and tried to explain daylight savings time to the people inside. I even saw a 12 year old convinced that Aboriginals had never invented boats, and when he was asked how they came to Australia in the first place he confidently replied "They come over during Pangea." I have never witnessed such ignorance in all my years of living in the United States, with the possible exception of a 6 year old child who thought Alaska was an island off the coast of Mexico. But then, he was six, and all the people I encountered in Australia were at least twice as old.
This is all anecdotal, of course, but I find it quite compelling.
>>1190683
*incapable
Americans are dumb and self absorbed, we know
>>1190683
>as if I had ventured into Plato's cave and tried to explain daylight savings time to the people inside
I'll keep this line stowed away.
