<p>While browsing through copious videos of Berkeley lectures, I came across this horrifically ignorant portrayal of UC Berkeley by Steven Crowder, a comedian/conservative talk show contributer to Fox News, (who also was the voice for “The Brain” on the children’s television show, Arthur) </p>
<p>He basically does blind interviews asking random Berkeley students about seemingly unimportant political and historical questions. He proceeds to make a fool out of these students, and makes negative generalizations of Berkeley, claiming that “despite it being the number one public university, it is comprised of idiots.”</p>
<p>And I am sure that there were many intellectual responses to his questions, but he censored all of them. </p>
<p>The question, " What caused the Great Depressions? " is quite a stupid one. There is hardly a concrete answer and this is a question that’s still debated as to what caused it. There’s tons of aspects which contributed, there isn’t one sole “cause.”</p>
<p>Not everyone likes politics or history… I am sure that if he went to any other university, there would be students who would give similar answers. This video just feeds the conservatives.</p>
<p>It is clearly comedy though. Berkeley students are intelligent!</p>
<p>I’m not the biggest fan of Berkeley, but you’ve got to be a pretty big dumbass to say that everyone is an idiot because a sample population of 10+ people could not answer history questions.
The professor though…</p>
<ol>
<li>He has a lot to say about the right to bear arms. Someone should have asked him what the first 4 words of the second amendment are.</li>
<li>There were many contributing causes to the Great Depression. Black Friday is not a complete answer, but it’s a better answer than “the Federal Reserve”. The Federal Reserve what?</li>
</ol>
<p>The questions were loaded and unfair to the people being asked. History, Legal Studies, or Political Science majors with an emphasis on the U.S. are the only people who could reasonably be expected to answer these questions sheerly on merit of being at any university; the rest of the American public wouldn’t be any more able to answer them than the people in the video.</p>
<p>That said, I’m not surprised that he was able to find people who were foolish enough to fall for his bait (disregarding all of his anti-Marxist stuff here). There are a lot of idiots here, but that’s going to be true of any population of people. The admissions standards are based on writing and stats - far from idiot-proof - and it’s virtually impossible to actually make people “smarter” - to quote a rather abrasive lifting coach, “You can expose them to information, but your responsibility* ends there.”</p>
<p>*In my opinion, your capability ends there as well, just to clarify.</p>
<p>^I agree with anon5389567. Hmm honestly I think to get a good picture of any event or action covered by the news you have to watch all three and then come up with your own opinion which is what I do, oh and watch daily show and colbert report along with those for a good laugh.</p>
<p>^I just saw that video. Sighhh, somehow I don’t think they got a 5 in AP US Gov and Pol (I did, lol but it was easy), how do kids forget these things, I mean forgetting Orgo Chem memorizations after a bunch of years is understandable, but forgetting simple social or political science facts/concepts like that seems impossible to me, I mean right now my brain is focusing on nothing but Comp Sci, Multi-bariable calc, and Mechnical Physics BUT I would still never forget the simple foundational concepts of our US constition and history should be intrinsic like learning to ride a bike, unless he only showed the kids who gave dumb answers and didn’t show the majority who answered those questions correctly.</p>
<p>@Diivio: “how do kids forget these things”:
You forget that this is modern America. People - particularly young people - do not care. There’s a reason that the main slogan of the Young Democrats (effectively the Young Marxists) at my High School was “End the Apathy.”</p>
<p>Oddly enough, they stopped complaining about apathy when election season rolled around and it became obvious that the student body were planning on voting. The fact that the apathy had been reduced only enough for people to go out and vote - heaven forbid that people do some actual candidate research instead of near-blindly voting Democrat* - conveniently slipped their minds.</p>
<p>*The operative part of this is “near-blindly,” not “Democrat.”</p>
<p>^lol yeah we had those at our school too, except they blinded voted Republican instead of doing research and said horrid things “Go back to Kenya and Obama’s a MUslim racist terrorist” It’s funny I wish we’d stop grouping ourselves in any way: race,religion,ethnicity, political views, gender, sexual orientation,etc grrrrrr This grouping truly destroys what I think an ideal democracy should be where we make our decisions based on our own individual thoughts and beliefs that should be a result of intense research of both sides of an issue. AHHH HUMANITY please re-inspire the hope I have for thee, I plan on becoming an engineer to make human life more convenient, but I wish humans were cooler than we are now…sigh</p>