That’s the (ironic) title of a post by Stowe Boyd this morn­ing:

Read­ing the Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune in Lau­sanne this morn­ing. Yet another book com­ing out that proves that Amer­i­cans are know-nothing buf­foons, as if I didn’t already know. Only 37% of Amer­i­cans believe in evo­lu­tion, for cry­ing out loud.

[from Susan Jacoby: Bemoan­ing an Amer­ica that val­ues stu­pid­ity — Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune By Patri­cia Cohen]

[…]

Selected from a third-grade geog­ra­phy cur­ricu­lum, the $25,000 ques­tion asked: “Budapest is the cap­i­tal of what Euro­pean country?”

[Amer­i­can Idol plat­inum blonde Kel­lie] Pick­ler threw up both hands and looked at the large black­board perplexed. “I thought Europe was a coun­try,” she said. Play­ing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the gen­uine fifth graders: Hun­gary. “Hun­gry?” she said, eyes widen­ing in dis­be­lief. “That’s a coun­try? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hun­gry? I’ve never heard of it.”

In itself, the arti­cle isn’t par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing though a bit enter­tain­ing. How­ever, it’s yet another con­fir­ma­tion of the irre­versibil­ity of the slow fall of the US as the dom­i­nant eco­nomic and polit­i­cal power.

Com­pare what Sus­dan Jacoby calls “val­u­a­tion of stu­pid­ity” with the thirst for knowl­edge that is omnipresent through­out Chin­dia. For dif­fer­ent rea­sons (a true val­u­a­tion of knowl­edge based on cul­tural roots in India; bru­tal and crush­ing com­pe­ti­tion for every­thing in China, where knowl­edge is thought of as an asset in a giant bat­tle), young as well as older peo­ples highly value any knowl­edge oppor­tu­nity and will make the most of it.

I guess not many peo­ple in the US have seen the fol­low­ing slides…

Source: Yes, It Makes Me Proud To Be An Amer­i­can