United States of Ignorance?

How can one of the worlds's wealthiest industrialized
nations be home to some of the least informed citizens
in the world?

 It is a startling state of affairs when your bubble of personal perception is burst with all the subtlety of one of Donald Trump’s latest political gaffes. But burst it did while conducting interviews polling the general public’s perception of Thailand, and by proxy, their general sense of awareness of anything remotely foreign to America. Conducting these interviews led me to drastically recalibrate my expectations of the general American’s ignorance of the world outside of the good old U.S. of A.  When asked just a few (six) questions about Thailand, it was startling to see such a general lack of the slightest idea of anything to do with Thailand, other than the fact that it was in Asia.

Just the Facts Ma'am

The Questions:

           1) What continent is Thailand in?

           2) What is the capital of Thailand?

           3) What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think          

           of Thailand?

           4) Can you name an important historical event that 

           happened in or involving Thailand in the past century?

           5)     ... in the past five years?

           6)     ...in the past year?

The Sources:

            Barbara: 54, Bachelor’s Degree, Manager

            Tom: 79, Bachelor’s Degree, Human Resources (Retired)

            Lou: 60, Bachelor’s Degree, P.E. Teacher

            Tim: 22, 4^th Year Political Science Major, Cal Poly

            Mike: 26, Bachelor’s Degree, Civil Engineer

            Megan: 23, Bachelor’s Degree, Graphic Designer

  Ignorance FTW   

  

       Out of the six sources interviewed, all of them surmised the proper continent. All’s well and good there, but in subsequent questioning, the results were decidedly worse. Of the six sources, only Tim and Tom were able to answer the majority of the questions.  

What does American Pie have to do with Thailand?

 For a country that has had a good amount of American news coverage in the past 5 years, it’s quite telling when only a few people can answer some basic knowledge questions about a foreign country that many Americans pay little heed to what going on outside the American isolation bubble. Even Tim, who was able to respond to all but one of the questions (Can you name and important event that happened in the past year?) found a way to put an “Americentric” spin on the question “What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Thailand?” with his answer of “Stifler punching a dude in the balls and yelling Bangkok!” While Tim subsequently offered the more serious answer of “cheap tourism” his initial response just goes to illustrate the collective “me” mentality of America as a whole, more concerned with pop culture and  domestic trivialities than what goes on in the big wide world outside of the American isolation bubble.


While I was quite taken aback by the general ignorance of foreign events by most of my sources, what hit me even harder was the general unabashedness of this ignorance. And this is a trend I consistently see, not just during the interviews I conducted. I’ve never considered myself an outlier, but after these interviews, it appears I may be, which has prompted me to question: How is it possible for so many people to know so little about the world? It only seems natural to me to cultivate an interest in what is going on around the world, not just in my immediate backyard, but apparently that view isn’t shared by nearly as many as I thought. But, if I were a betting man, I’d be willing to say that everyone I interviewed knows that Donald Trump is considering adding the White House to his real estate portfolio. Good to know we’ve got our priorities straight.