I remember when I went backpacking around Europe for 12 months when I took a year off uni (the 'go travel for a year' is a pretty common tradition amongst Australian uni students) - the Americans I ran into would constantly be laughed at by everyone else because of how poor their general knowledge was. I'm not saying they were stupid per se, but they sure came across as idiots and the perception of 'US folks are stupid' was so common on the backpacking circuit that Canadians would wear their flag sewn onto their jackets and luggage so that people knew they weren't from the US.
So from that perspective, I'd say you guys need to learn a bit MORE at school.
As a uni lecturer in Australia, I'd say the US exchange students we get are noticeably less advanced than the Australian and Asian students.
The point of most education, though, isn't to learn facts and figures. It's to learn skills - the ability to understand and calculate scientific problems, mathematical problems, logical problems, the ability to critically read and interpret literature and social-scientific models (e.g. economic models). Knowledge is forgotten about, but skills can be retained. A lot of the precise facts that you learn at skill won't be of direct use to you (though a lot of it will be important to things like casting an informed political vote), but the skills that you develop when analysing novels, doing equations and so on will benefit you greatly. Think of it like physical training for sport - learning the theory of a sporting play off by heart will have limited relevance outside that immediate play, but by training your muscles and practicing how to coordinate different movements, you develop skills that you can then maintain with less effort, and that transfer pretty well across to different sports. The same thing happens with intellectual skills - learning to critically read, say, Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Shakespeare's King Lear will give you the skills you need to critically analyse media, politics and business agreements in the future.
So from that perspective, I'd say you guys need to learn a bit MORE at school.
As a uni lecturer in Australia, I'd say the US exchange students we get are noticeably less advanced than the Australian and Asian students.
The point of most education, though, isn't to learn facts and figures. It's to learn skills - the ability to understand and calculate scientific problems, mathematical problems, logical problems, the ability to critically read and interpret literature and social-scientific models (e.g. economic models). Knowledge is forgotten about, but skills can be retained. A lot of the precise facts that you learn at skill won't be of direct use to you (though a lot of it will be important to things like casting an informed political vote), but the skills that you develop when analysing novels, doing equations and so on will benefit you greatly. Think of it like physical training for sport - learning the theory of a sporting play off by heart will have limited relevance outside that immediate play, but by training your muscles and practicing how to coordinate different movements, you develop skills that you can then maintain with less effort, and that transfer pretty well across to different sports. The same thing happens with intellectual skills - learning to critically read, say, Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Shakespeare's King Lear will give you the skills you need to critically analyse media, politics and business agreements in the future.
