quote:I am continually amazed at how little most Americans, in particular, know or understand about those various cultures and their people.
With 3 teenagers under my roof, and my first exposure to the secondary public education system, I am not at all surprised. All primary and secondary public education is currently based on passing standardized testing, not creating well rounded individuals through exposure to the rest of the world.
In my opinion, the US education system's main fault is that it teaches isolationism because it centers too much on the US and does not expose anyone to other cultures.
Europe is farther ahead in this regard. To the best of my knowledge, most Europeans can speak at least one language other than their native tongue and they are taught this from their first day of school. They basically have to because the country next door likely has a different language altogether.
Fred
