Confronting the causes of our ignorance is imperative. To date, it’s no secret the U.S extremely ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism is, like many other extreme ideologies, the way of thinking of a child. There’s a kind of love for your country, ethnicity and culture that is like an adult’s love for a parent: “They’re flawed and imperfect, but I love them even more for it”. We have involuntarily been involved in this behavior by a number of ways.
World history and culture is not integrated into U.S public school curriculums as it should be. The McGraw Hill grade 5 textbook recently described African slave trade as an ‘immigration of laborers’ rather than a ‘forced migration, in which their human rights were disregarded’. Furthermore, no state requires history-teacher candidates to have a major or minor in history in order to teach it. These teachers use their textbooks as a crutch, rather than a tool. Professor of American University, Dr. Lee, suspects that these and other textbook woes are largely why in a 2013 Gallup poll, just 8 percent of respondents found their knowledge of history to be valuable.
The worst part about these statistics: It's not the kids' fault. They're merely the victims of a horribly failed educational system.
Furthermore, 16 years after 9/11, the complex international environment of the Middle East feels ever more distant, foreign and strange. Only a third of Americans are thought to hold passports, compared to about 50 percent in Australia, more than 60 percent in Canada and some 80 percent in the United Kingdom. Study-abroad rates at American colleges and universities are, on average, stuck in the low single digits.
It is no wonder, then, that Americans feel more obliged to believe news and media channels about foreign countries. They already feel so distant and foreign to us, so believing these news channels seems to be the only alternative to exploring more about other cultures. What many Americans do not recognize is that U.S news networks are a deceptive and corruptive business, fueled by big business.
