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Yet something must have gone wrong. As a European, I've met many Americans who only learned of the US losing the Vietnam war, when they were in Europe. Some of
by rawfan 11y ago
Yet something must have gone wrong. As a European, I've met many Americans who only learned of the US losing the Vietnam war, when they were in Europe.
Some of them might not have been that bright, though. I remember an exchange student protesting a poem we read in English class because she thought it implied the US lost the war. There was complete silence in class and our teacher just said "well, they did lose." She actually said "No, we won it when we threw the bomb on Hiroshima."
- brianwawok 11y ago* Just because have facts in textbooks, does not mean that students will actually learn them. Take the most average person you know. 1/2 of people in the world are dumber. Surprised someone doesn't know who won Vietnam?
- detaro 11y agothat's not how averages work...
- umanwizard 11y agoIt kind of is... IQ is normally distributed, and in the normal distribution average == median.
- sangnoir 11y agoExcept it isn't - because of sampling biases. > Take the most average person you know The average person you know might not be close to population average, depending on the circle of people you know - let's say Stanford post-docs.
- brianwawok 11y ago* Take the average person from a high school class you took
- tyingq 11y agoSo, you've met some number of ignorant Americans, including someone who thinks Hiroshima is in Vietnam. That's not really compelling evidence that there's a widespread belief among Americans that we won the Vietnam war.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- umanwizard 11y agoWell, to counter your anecdotal evidence: I am American, was once an exchange student in Europe, know what country Hiroshima is in, and don't think we won the Vietnam war.