<p>When I was in high school we had an Encyclopedia Britannica that stopped in the middle of World War 2. Luckily my school textbooks covered more. :)</p>
<p>As for classics I went through a Thomas Hardy phase back in high school - mostly thanks to Masterpiece Theater. When we lived in Germany after I stopped feeling I had to read German to get better at it, I read a lot of British classics. I loved Trollope, enjoyed Henry James (until I got bogged down in The Ambassadors), read a bunch of Dickens. From my high school days I remember liking War and Peace, Moby Dick, Age of Innocence, all of Jane Austen. </p>
<p>I’d like to read more non-European stuff. I’ve tried to read Marquez, but have no patience for him. I liked Allende’s House of the Spirits. I listened to part of Things Fall Apart, but never got into it. I read A Bend in the River a long, long time ago. I like character driven books with a nice plot.</p>
<p>Roughly 90 million Indians migrated from rural areas to cities in India between 1965 - 1975 or thereabouts, the product of the so-called Green Revolution.</p>
<p>Two million refugees from Iraq to Syria, Jordan, Iran, and elsewhere in the last four years, upwards of 600,000 ethnically cleansed by General Betrayus between July and October of 2007. This dwarfs the number of refugees from Darfur.</p>
<p>Tokenadult, are you telling me American students don’t typically read whole books at school? It’s not normal to read a different set of classic novels for every grade? I’m confused.</p>
<p>Oh! Oh! I can answer this question!</p>
<p>We’re assigned required reading all the time; and yes, it’s usually whole books. You read them if you want to; generally, if you’re the type of student who would be reading in your spare time regardless. Otherwise, there are always sparknotes. Or cliffnotes, if you prefer those; teachers are usually less aware of them. For any given book 3/4 of the class doesn’t actually read it; English is an extremely BSable subject.</p>
<p>Is that really true Keshira? I am so clueless. So for say 3/4 of a given class, it’s all just instrumental? That is, they aren’t there to learn/grow/explore per se, but to maximize their grade in the most efficient fashion?</p>
<p>Um. I read many, many books cover to cover in high school.</p>
<p>About ignorance – yeah, it’s real and scary.</p>
<p>I have had students in college who never heard of Wales, were shocked to find out that the Victorians lived after Shakespeare, had no idea about the story told in Genesis, oh I could go on and on.</p>
<p>In a social situation I was debating the dropping of the atom bomb in a very conservative room. I was probably the only one who opposed it. Arguments from “educated” people included 1) They didn’t know about radiation in 1945 2) One woman said she’d be dead because her parents were in a concentration camp and without the atom bomb Hitler would have won the war and 3) The Japanese would have used it on us if we didn’t use it first.</p>
<p>These people were adamant in their positions.</p>
<p>Furthermore a full 3/4 of Americans believe that seasons result from the earth being closer to sun in summer and father away in winter instead of understanding that the tilt of the earth on its axis causes seasons.</p>
<p>I had a waiter in Paris who wanted to come to the US and recited all the state capitals. It was a very charming restaurant in a hotel that had many Anglophones. I was the only English speaker in the restaurant. The rest were at the other hotel restaurant, a steak house.</p>
<p>I didn’t have the heart to tell the waiter that most Americans don’t know all the state capitals. He felt this was essential knowledge for a US visit.</p>
<p>I have no doubt you’ve read many many books mythmom, as have so many others on this board. I don’t think we can account for individuals. But I’m curious, about the school book reading (or lack thereof): Is this an American thing? Or a generational thing? Or both?</p>
<p>Both my kids read all the books assigned to them. I know that not all their friends did. Fair to say that among achieving students students read some of the books assigned and do use Spark Notes for the others.</p>
<p>I don’t know what’s TYPICAL. When my son and I went shopping for high schools when he was in eighth grade, I was looking for high schools that would assign him to read quite a few whole books (not just textbooks), and I eventually found one. Of course what is assigned and what is actually read by the majority of students are distinct issues.</p>
<p>I had one kid in a Catholic high school and another in a public high school in NYC. They both read voraciously both for school and not. the older one loved The Chosen, which was assigned and then sought out Davita’s Harp (wonderful!) which was not. In fact, those books were used for her SAT essay. The younger one is a second semester sophomore and has read full works from the ancient Greeks (which is how she’s come to want to study classics in college) to Beowulf to Shakespeare to American authors. We’re conservative Americans who have book everywhere. I can honestly say that I’ve never heard of a school that didn’t assign reading of full books. My older daughter’s school is lovingly called “Soprano High” and they read books. My younger daughter’s school is an inner city school that recently had to cancel sports because of gang activity, but they read books too. Actually, the public school gives the books to the students to keep. Whole books.
As far as Americans being ignorant, there may be some truth to that, but I bet one can find that elsewhere as well. I wonder if those ignorant souls are hardworking, making a living, wanting better for their kids-type people who donate to the needy and together as a group have furthered a nation that is the beacon of the world. My husband was an athlete who graduated high school functionally illiterate. I guarantee you that he can’t name the state capitals and rarely reads for pleasure, but is the one guy everyone can count on and many do. I’d bet he doesn’t even know specifically of the Great Migration here in America, but he’s far from ignorant.</p>
<p>zoosermom: You make a good point, and no disrespect toward your husband was intended. I can’t always name all the capitals either; that was a point of comparison about how important geography is to other countries. However, it definitely backfired if it seemed hostile to guys like your husband.</p>
<p>My gripe about the atomic bomb conversation was the determination and conviction with which parties argued their unfactual points of view. I may sound ignorant because I am always saying “Oh really? I didn’t know that.” I feel differently about people who won’t even reconsider erroneous info.</p>
<p>There are things all of us don’t know. I have been corrected on CC many times. I feel so that so often there is no willingness to learn.</p>
<p>“zoosermom: You make a good point, and no disrespect toward your husband was intended. I can’t always name all the capitals either; that was a point of comparison about how important geography is to other countries. However, it definitely backfired if it seemed hostile to guys like your husband.”</p>
<p>Not at all and I didn’t take it that way. I just think that sometimes CC can be a little insular and I think it’s important for all of us (even me!) to appreciate the other. It seemed a little like America bashing and I think that our imperfect people and nation are quite wonderful. My response wasn’t directed to you and I’m sorry if it seemed that way. </p>
<p>I’m pretty well informed and downright stupidity irks the heck out of me, too, and I can be a little (ok, a lot) sarcastic about things like that, so I do know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Our high school definitely assigns whole books, my kids at least read them, and mostly complained bitterly about them. Why so depressing? Why so boring? They love to read, but mostly genre fiction.</p>
<p>“I feel so that so often there is no willingness to learn.”</p>
<p>Here’s a wondeful read Mythmom</p>
<p>“his impassioned, tough-minded work of contemporary history paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with Americas heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American societyon the political right and the left. Americas endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic”
[Susan</a> Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason](<a href=“http://www.susanjacoby.com/]Susan”>http://www.susanjacoby.com/)</p>
<p>Twice on national television I heard weather guys said something to the effect that since there is a 50% chance of rain on Saturday and a 50
% chance of rain on Sunday, there is a 100% chance of rain on the weekend.</p>
<p>I find this disturbing.</p>
<p>Yes, our imperfect nation is a wonderful place, but really, sometimes we are sooooo embarrassing. Example, several years back our local newspaper profiled a high school senior who had spent her junior year as an exchange student in Germany, a couple of years right after the fall of the Berlin wall. She had to apply and be interviewed for this trip and was selected to go.</p>
<p>One of the things she said in the interview was how exciting it was to find out all about the German reaction to the fall of the Berlin wall, because before she went to Germany (ie, before she was actually in place in Germany), she had NEVER HEARD of the Berlin wall (!).</p>
<p>I like the title of this thread. Another way to put it: Why are some Americans so ignorant?
Don’t get me wrong. I am proud to be American, but sometimes it’s sad to hear people say things like “Oh, you’re from Hong Kong? Is that part of Japan?” or I’ve heard a friend in Switzerland tell me that she gets this a lot: “So do you speak Swiss?”</p>
<p>Some people in Switzerland might answer yes to the question “Do you speak Swiss?”</p>
<p>I do not agree with the premise that Americans are less educated or less interested in learning than students in other countries. America’s education system is open to everyone–even the elite boarding prep schools which seek diversity and offer financial aid. Part of the difficulty of education in the U.S. is assimiliation of a wide variety of cultures, languages & economic backgrounds-- unlike most other countries. Suna (post #19): It is probably Edina High School and,if so, I have met some of tokenadult’s classmates. Getting back to my initial statement, if Americans were not interested in education or learning, then the U.S. wouldn’t have over 2400 four year degree granting colleges & universities & thousands of two year junior colleges & community colleges.</p>