The Uneducated Superpower

I stumbled across an interesting website about literacy in the USA, or rather the LACK of it. I'm not talking about proficiency in reading and writing, but in terms of general knowledge, foreign language skills and basic geography & history.

http://www.rehydrate.org/facts/global_illiteracy.htm

Here are a few interesting tidbits from the above site:

• Almost 50% of the high school seniors in Baltimore, Maryland could not locate the United States on a world map. (LOL)
  
• 95% of American college freshmen tested could not locate Vietnam on a world map. (OMG)
  
• 75% of Americans responding to a nationwide survey could not locate El Salvador on a map. (It's between Honduras and Guatemala)
• Only 15% of U.S. high school students in 1979 studied a foreign language and fewer than 3% of all high school graduates achieve a "meaningful competence" in a foreign language.
  
• France and the Federal Republic of Germany commit 1% of their national budgets to (international) educational, cultural and information activities; the US Government less than .1%

The information on that site appears to be a bit dated (circa 1990s), but there is still some truth in it. Although considered a world superpower, the US still lags their 1st World counterparts in terms of education. Instead, the spending is diverted to the military-industrial complex and corporate America.

It is pompous to believe that the US is the centre of the universe, that everything needs to revolve around it. But, if the above info is even half true, the world needs to worry.

Especially now, with a leader that preaches a mantra of democracy and freedom in foreign lands, yet at the same time, increase the restrictions of those freedoms in his own country. The events of recent years have not helped the situation. The world watches, as the US, once the protagonist, turns aggressor.

Ignorance may be bliss, but not if you've got an arsenal of weapons and a trigger happy finger.