This annoys me, as does the woman who work with me that talks like:
"So I says to him 'I sees you over there. You know?'"
"So I says to him 'I sees you over there. You know?'"
It astounds me that people remain ignorant of other countries and their cultures. Doesn't the school system educate people about these things? I was taught what a "zee" is. Aren't Americans taught what a "zed" is? I should not be surprised. An American on line buddy recently asked me if I was really cold as our temperature is only 40. huh? That would be 40 Celsius. I know that the temperatures down there are imperial..why didn't this person know that the temperatures up here are in metric? It reminds me of a woman I used to work with--she didn't know what Hiroshima is. She had also never heard of the Holocaust...huh???
Did you correct her and inform her that it is Cowboys, First Nations, and people from many parts of Asia (not just Indians) that make up the quilt that is Canada?An American woman (from NJ) once said me that she thought only cowboys and Indians lived in Canada. No joke.
People sometimes wonder why I call this town "grand junk" It's simple, really. The people here are just as bad as the ones you are talking about! We've had high schoolers come in who don't know something, yet instead of taking the time to figure it out they(sadly I am NOT kidding here!) that they're not in school, so they don't have to think. We've got a video game in the lobby. It's a shooting game. One of the levels is a math level. On the screen will be the numbers 0-10, you are supposed to shoot the correct answer. On the beginner level, the equations are all addition, in advanced you get addition and subtraction and on extreme you get division and multiplication as well. NONE of the equations are double digits. It's all 1X0, 9/3, 5+4, 8-8 etc. Simple stuff. At LEAST 75% of the ADULTS in this town cannot get it. I really do, in THIS TOWN, think it is the school system. I was talking to a couple of girls shortly after I moved out here. They graduated 4 years ago, and I graduated 9 years ago. The difference between FL(which from what I heard ranks something like 48 in the school system grid) and here(CO) is crazy! When I graduated we had to have at least a 3.0. We couldn't have failed any more than a certain number of classes OR grades in general. We had to do the standardised tests and write a lot. All of our classes except the arts and phys ed required an essay of at least 1,000 words(even my internship class did.) If you missed over a certain number of days, you had to have a doctor's note, not just a parent's note excusing you. When I told the girls here that, both of them told me that they'd never have been able to graduate if they'd had that sort of requirement to be able to do so. . . .I think people just get wrapped up in their own narrow little worlds and they do not want to expand. I can deal with this lack of knowledge. I usually just explain something to the person and they may take away a little piece of knowledge. But when you try to explain to someo ne who then looks at you with that "glazed over" look - they do not want to learn anything...like their brains have shut down.