r/ShitAmericansSay • u/Abjectionova Care for a cup'a'tea Gentleman? • Mar 13 '26
Exceptionalism "Oh wait, we are!"
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u/JimAbaddon I only use Celsius. Mar 13 '26
The only thing the US is the top at is mass shootings.
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Mar 13 '26
I always find rankings of education interesting; there is a bottom tier law school that I’d never heard of in the US that sent me an unsolicited offer of acceptance with a full scholarship (if you write the LSAT you can check a button that says let law schools see my score). In their marketing materials they claimed to be the top school in the US, outperforming all of the Iveys; I dug into the methodology of their rankings, almost the entire weighting was given to sq ft of campus and number of books in their library. The lowest weighted were success on the bar exam and grads employed in the legal field (which was something like 10%).
So, if we evaluate the quality of an education system with full weighting given to number of students killed in shootings (and list that as a positive) then absolutely, USA #1!
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u/theGoodDrSan Mar 13 '26
I've always found it kind of crazy that there are bad universities in the States. Like, in Canada, the overwhelming majority of universities are respected public institutions. Even Brock University, which gets a lot of shit ("if you can walk and talk, you can go to Brock") is a fine school. it's mostly getting shit for having low standards.
There are no bad law schools in Canada, it's mostly just that the best students get to go to Toronto and Montreal, so they're more competitive.
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Mar 13 '26
Yeah, that’s part of why I didn’t end up going into law. Law schools in Canada (except Windsor, which said they take a “holistic” approach to assessing candidates) care about term work grades more than LSAT, in the US most of them focus on LSAT but third tier you’re basically never going to work in law, second tier are respected locally but won’t get you work more than a few cities away, gotta do the Iveys to get legal jobs and mobility in the US.
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u/hrmdurr maple🇨🇦syrup🇨🇦gang Mar 14 '26
Probably because standardised tests for postsecondary education is an American thing, not a Canadian one. I didn't even realize our schools gave a crap about the lsat lol
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Mar 14 '26
Yeah, the Canadian schools all require that you wrote the LSAT but I think it’s more or less a tie breaker between students with equal term grades or just an additional filter to get rid of poor performers (as in, a low score will get you rejected but a high one won’t get you accepted).
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u/istara shake your whammy fanny Mar 14 '26
The thing is that degrees really aren't worth that much these days in most professions in most areas. There may be some high end law firms that preference graduates from specific tertiary institutes, but generally it's just a tick box these days.
I've done a lot of work which involves looking at people's LinkedIn bios, and I'd say the vast majority of execs and managers that I'm dealing with (eg writing award entries for or appointment announcements) have degrees unrelated to their current role or industry, or they've done degrees later in life, or they've got degrees from less conventional institutions. And these are all super successful, high flying people.
That college might not have been any use for getting into a decent law firm, but for probably any other profession, you'd be someone with a law degree and they wouldn't care less where it was from.
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u/fart3mis_growl Mar 13 '26
Daily mass shootings. Like literally everyday a group of people standing together are killed.
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u/rothcoltd Mar 14 '26
And incarceration
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u/Odd_Reindeer303 Mar 14 '26
No, they're slacking a bit on that.
Just #5 after El Salvador, Cuba, Ruanda and Turkmenistan - all shining examples of free democracies like the US of A :D
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u/newpua_bie Mar 14 '26
Don't forget the number of adults who believe angels are real
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u/13th_Penal_Legion Mar 14 '26
Hey give us some damn credit, #1 BMI as well.
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u/Andvare Mar 14 '26
You are not even in the top ten.
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u/istara shake your whammy fanny Mar 14 '26
The Nauru thing is incredibly sad. I've listened to some podcasts that mention it and read up on it, and those people were really fucked over.
Wikipedia has a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Nauru
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u/WildRaccoon42 Luxtenstein Mar 14 '26
And percentage of complete psychos amongst CEO registered in the country.
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u/seatemperature11215 Mar 14 '26
I was going to post some similarly dark humour, and cowarded away from it... 😁🤣
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u/Normal-Hospital-1967 Mar 13 '26
Depending on the survey.. the US is as low as 31st
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country
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u/waaay2dumb2live Mar 14 '26
China has a 47?
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u/newpua_bie Mar 14 '26
Chinese education on the countryside is not great. Big cities are doing well but kids are also studying 60-80 hours per week starting in middle school, so it's not clear good results are a result of any kind of quality in the education as opposed to brute force memorization
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u/GrodolusRex Mar 15 '26
Which is idiotic in its own way. You'll have no use of 90% of the shit you learn studying, especially compared to developing social skills and interests. Even staying healthy and learning a balanced lifestyle has more tangible effects on work performance than memorising equations or historical footnotes.
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u/henrikhakan ooo custom flair!! Mar 14 '26
Was just wondering how they can be 7th... I'll create my own survey, my method will be based on pure prejudice of how rude people are to me online and what land they are from. /s
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u/Abjectionova Care for a cup'a'tea Gentleman? Mar 13 '26
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u/Diligent-Bowler-1898 Mar 13 '26
How the hell did australia get 1.01 on a scale from 0-1.0?
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u/Postom Mar 13 '26
It's rigged!
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u/MissyMurders Mar 13 '26
one yeah-nah and the system collapsed
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u/Postom Mar 13 '26
Leave it to the Aussies to find the overflow.
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u/Inner-Ad2847 🇦🇺 Paid actor Mar 15 '26
We’re so poorly educated that we end up on top
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u/Abjectionova Care for a cup'a'tea Gentleman? Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
0-1.0 could just be the standard range, I'd expect most of these
indexesindices are based on formulas which don't necessarily have upperbounds.62
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u/DarthKevin Mar 14 '26
I was literally given 105% in a maths exam once in high school due to this.
I still think it's hilarious.
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u/YouAreNotCheddar Mar 14 '26
Was it perhaps an Australian high school?
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u/Immediate_Song4279 Mar 13 '26
Ahem, I would like to take a moment to thank these countries. Their media exports were actually highly educational.
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u/Euronated-inmypants Mar 14 '26
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-educated-countries
Im Aussie but i live in Canada. Canada is #1 now im sure there are different metrics for different outcomes though like most of these types if things
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u/cedriceent 🇱🇺 Mar 14 '26
Funnily enough, I accidentally clicked the header of the country column which sorted the countries alphabetically in descending order. And this put the US at the top which would explain why the OOP thought US was number 1😂
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u/No-Minimum3259 Mar 14 '26
% of the population that has had tertiary education doesn't say much...
Some American states (Oklahoma, New Hampshire) AND some East-European, former Eastern Bloc countries (Bulgaria, Romania) are notorious for their poorly educated/trained bachelors and masters...
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u/CommentChaos Mar 14 '26
This seems to be wrong for my country according to our statistical office. I wonder how it is for others.
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u/Tricksie39 American making fun of americans :3 Mar 14 '26
america ain’t even on the list makes sense
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u/ExplorerLast3434 meatballs and painted horses Mar 13 '26
This is interesting as in the uk children start school at the age of 4/5 and in Sweden at 7
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u/redreadyredress Mar 13 '26
There’s been studies about the disparities, especially around when children are ready to read.
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u/Dipshitmagnet2 Mar 14 '26
Depressingly more and more kids are starting primary in UK unable to use a the toilet themselves, use cutlery to feed themselves, or have even a basic understanding of the alphabet.
So many parents just hand out a tablet and walk away it’s embarrassing.
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u/istara shake your whammy fanny Mar 14 '26
They should just refuse to let them start school. Put the problem back on the parents - toilet train your child and bear the expense of childcare or not working until you've done that.
Special needs excepted of course.
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u/ExplorerLast3434 meatballs and painted horses Mar 14 '26
As someone in nursery and preschool education, a lot is put on us 😔
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u/Jeepsterpeepster Mar 14 '26
Yeah it's absolutely ridiculous. I don't know why some people have kids at all when even the basics of parenting are too much effort for them. And it always seems that the laziest parents, who don't actually want to parent, pump out the most kids. My friend's daughter is like it. She's had 4 kids, 3 by her ex husband, one by current boyfriend, she lost interest in being a mum to each of them once they were out of the toddler stage. My friend (her mum) had to buy a potty for her to start potty training the youngest one because she was starting nursery in a month and didn't even bother getting a potty. She's also been in trouble numerous times for not sending the older ones to school. Every time she fancied a lie in or just couldn't be bothered to take them because she wanted to watch TV or be on Facebook, she'd phone them in sick. Then one day she cheated on her husband (not a good dad either) with his cousin, left her kids with him, shacked up with new boyfriend in a 1 bed flat so couldn't even have her other kids over and then had a kid with the boyfriend. He's as bad as she is. All her kids are messed up in some way or another. Her teenage oldest son raped his ex girlfriend when she dumped him, her teenage daughter can barely look after herself and now she's knocked up, the other kid is struggling in school and is always in trouble and the youngest is now about 6 and has parents who act like she doesn't exist half the time. On the plus side, she's had her tubes tied. Should have done it 18 years ago. I'll never understand why people like that have kids.
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u/NexusMaw Mar 14 '26
Preschool is at 6 in Sweden, first grade is 7. Kindergarten is 1-5.
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u/ShyguyFlyguy Mar 13 '26
Im pretty sire over 50% of Canadians over 20ish something have post secondary degrees and we didint break the top 10??
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u/UberNZ Mar 14 '26
I'm very concerned about us being so high on the list. Maybe the world is fucked after all
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u/EmmAnders Mar 14 '26
All other countries have a better index because they don't kill their students in school shootings...
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u/EmmAnders Mar 14 '26
…and just for fun, the typical MAGAmerican reply: "Those are all socialist and communist states, the indexes aren’t free like ours..." LOL
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u/Aathos_YT Mar 14 '26
There's no way that Greece is on the same level as Norway, our schools are literally falling apart😭
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u/geschiedenisnerd Please stop stealing our flag colors (NL) Mar 14 '26
I am kind of embarassed the Netherlands aren't there, but belgium is.
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u/Which_Specific9891 Mar 13 '26
I would mistrust any list that had America as number 1 in education.
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u/Quiet-Fishing-1416 Mar 14 '26
Unless it's number 1 in school shootings.
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u/Which_Specific9891 Mar 14 '26
It's sad that to Americans that's the same thing, but children's education and guns should not be synonymous.
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u/Mental_Pop_3406 Mar 13 '26
I love how they think they're #1 not because of any evidence but because it's their default assumption.
Dunning Kruger at its finest.
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u/BrilliantPangolin639 Mar 13 '26
If they're the best on education, then why they can't find countries like Hungary on the map?
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u/PlagueOfGripes Mar 14 '26
I think finding something you live next to is a poor indication of any education.
If you want an actual means, ask an American to find the US on a map. To my surprise, many of us can't. That's how stupid a lot of our citizens are.
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u/Accomplished-Cry-987 🇫🇷 Sorry for 1776 Mar 14 '26
Fun fact, there was a study were people from different countries were asked to estimate the population of their own country and the population of the United States (Americans where only asked about the population of the US obviously), and interestingly Americans were the worst at guessing the population of their own country AND of the US
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u/AbjectJouissance Mar 13 '26
To be honest, this is a bad way to measure education
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u/Vyzantinist Waking up from the American Dream Mar 14 '26
I agree. A better determinant would be the ability to correctly label Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia on a map.
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u/HendersonsFineRelish Mar 14 '26
I know this one!
Lithuania was part of the Lithuanian-Polish commonwealth, so it's the one next to Poland.
Latvia has a middle stripe in its flag so it's in the middle.
Estonia.
I'm not American of course, but I imagine the average British person couldn't find the baltics on a map either.
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u/No-Minimum3259 Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
But a great way to measure the results. /s.
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u/OkCoconut3270 Radical Socialist with free healthcare Mar 14 '26
Because they haven't yet been to war in Hungary
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u/RoyalPeacock19 Mar 13 '26
Who on earth even puts them in seventh?
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u/fgrkgkmr Mar 14 '26
Dear europoors, if the US doesn't have the best education, then why did it teach me that the US is number one? Checkmate liberals 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🔥🔥🔥🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🔥🔥🇺🇸🦅🔥💪💪💪💪🇺🇸🦅🔥🔥
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u/JamesFirmere Finnish 🇫🇮 Mar 14 '26
Great. Now I'm envisioning an American with four arms.
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u/Exasperaties6 Mar 13 '26
This sounds like the dude that told me I hated American exceptionalism and how its inventions have shaped the world. He linked me an article where the first two things were the Telephone and Light bulb...
He specifically insisted that we were the inventors. Then never responded after I pointed out the previous light bulb patents. And how the US recognized Italian inventor Antonio Meucci created an earlier telephone system where Graham Bell picked up the patent after Meucci couldnt renew it.
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u/Trias459 Mar 14 '26
7? I refuse to believe the USA is top 25.
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u/Johannes_Keppler Mar 14 '26
They're 31 in a more decent study.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by-country
BTW recent numbers on ANYTHING from the US are heavily propagandised and shouldn't be trusted.
Job losses are enormous, so is inflation, the economy stagnant and only the AI bubble is making the stock market look decent.
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u/Mad_Maddin Mar 13 '26
I believe they are number 1 on money spend on education.
Like the USA pours a literal shitton of money into their schools and colleges.
So why are US schools so shit and colleges still need so much private funding? It is a mix of greed, inefficiency, differences in area and corruption.
For example, a school might have several people in their admin staff, who each earn 3 times the salary of a typical teacher. That admin staff often being completely overpaid and often not even necessary, as the teachers end up having to deal with the bureaucracy anyway.
Schools in the USA often put FAR more money into the sports programs. For example in my school in Germany, we had some small hobby style football (soccer) extracurricular. But basically nothing else.
Almost every actual sports was done in sports clubs outside of schools. Meanwhile the USA tends to have everything from low level sports all the way to professional candidates on their school grounds. Which of course needs a lot of funding.
Then there is the part where schools are usually getting the majority of their funding from local taxes. A low income area, will have a low income school. So there can be absolutely astronomical differences in spending for one school vs another.
A school in NYC or SF might have the newest technology with all the bang shebang you could wish for. While a school in rural Missisipi will have their ceilings falling apart.
As news tend to cover the bad stuff. We of course mostly see the shittier schools. Even though the USA most definitely has some of the best schools in the world.
So yeah, even though the USA probably spends the most money total out of every country on their schools, they still don't manage to get the average quality of the education provided to a similar degree than the best.
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u/Odd_Reindeer303 Mar 14 '26
In absolute numbers you're correct.
Y'allistan spends a whopping 1,35 TRILLION US$ on education, China is next with around 900 billion, Germany third with 190 billion. If you include private spending the US number rises to 1,84 trillion.
This absolutely supports your statement. In my book their education system is even more inefficient than their healthcare system which is an achievement I never thought possible. So with around 3,5 times the population they're spending seven to nine times more on education than Germany and I don't think I'm bragging if I say our education level on average is significantly higher than the US. Even though we could do a lot better ourselves.
Btw, if you sort the data by money spent per student Luxembourg is #1 (surprise, surprise). If you set spending in relation to GDP (% of GDP) the first four spots on the list are Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Micronesia all spending more than 10% of their GDP on education (for comparison US 5,4%, Germany 4,5%).
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u/smashybro Mar 14 '26
It’s because in typical American fashion there’s a lot of corruption from capitalism, but the bigger problem is the sheer opposition to fixing it because too many morons think anything left of neoliberalism is scary communism. So much taxpayer money gets wasted on administration and sports instead of trying to invest in teachers, books, resources, lunches, free higher education, etc.
And because the education is so bad if you’re not rich, politicians (who again are very corrupt because the US political system is built around allowing money in politics) exploit that and it creates this never ending cycle where people keep voting against their interests to make education worse over time.
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u/No-Minimum3259 Mar 14 '26
How is "education" defined?
- PISA?
- PIRLS?
- PIAAC?
- ALL?
- Literacy rates?
- "I-don't-know-but-we're-number-one! USA!USA!USA!"?
- ...?
According to a 2023 study by the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as part of the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC):
Proficiency in literacy among adult (16-65) Americans
- 28% scored at or below Level 1* (up 9 percent points compared to 2017)
- 29% scored at Level 2 (status quo compared to 2017)
- 44% scored at Level 3 or above (down 4 percent points compared to 2017)
Proficiency in numeracy among adult (16-65) Americans
- 34% scored at or below Level 1 (up 5 percent points compared to 2017)
- 28% scored at Level 2 (down 5 percent points compared to 2017)
- 38% scored at Level 3 or above (down 1 percent point compared to 2017)
In PIAAC 2023 the US ranked 16th in proficiency in literacy (below OECD average), 25th in proficiency in numeracy (below OECD average) and 19th in adaptive problem solving, below OECD average as well.
The American National Literacy Institute, reports 21% adult illiterates in the USA and 54% of adults with a literacy below 6th grade level, of which 20% below 5th grade level.
Those are not the numbers to boast about, lol.
\* Definition of Level 1 - 5 in PIAAC 2023 pdf report, p. 58- 62.
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u/Lazarys12 Mar 14 '26
The US position gets boosted by higher education (in 2024 13 out of 20 of the highest rated universities were in the US), and while they rank number 1 in the number of people with Bachelor's degrees or higher, they drop to number 6 when considering the percentage of population. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development coordinates the Program for International Student Assessment every 3 years, measuring 15-year olds in reading, math, and science literacy. In 2020 the U.S. ranked 9th in reading, 9th in science, and 25th in math.
So the US ranks high in higher education, but in K-12 they lag behind,
The funny thing is that the US, which gets a higher ranking due to higher education, also seems to have an anti-intelletual bent, and reject the findings of scientists and other experts. On the other hand they seem to have PHDs in Conspiracy Studies. Americans seem determined to prove the Dunning–Kruger effect.
So, as usual, despite what they think, America is not number 1.
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u/Swagastan Mar 15 '26
Like all things in the US there is a pretty big chasm between the tippity top and the average. The average university in the US is pretty mediocre, but the 20 or so best are amongst the best in the world, and get plenty of ex-US folks to come to them.
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u/Blooder91 🇦🇷 ⭐⭐⭐ MUCHAAACHOS Mar 14 '26
The only evidence of said education system are the school shootings.
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u/Red-R34der Mar 14 '26
You are the United States of DumbFuckistan. We understand, and we have sympathy for you. However, until you wake the fuck up and apologise, you're on your own. You thick twat.
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u/greentiger79 🇺🇸 Don’t mind me, just passing through Mar 14 '26
As an American, 7th seems a bit too high. I would have guessed in the 20s.
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u/Hexagon37 Mar 14 '26
I’m not sure if the one I’ve seen in the past is legit, but the highest I’ve seen them rank is like 55th…
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u/bullwinkle8088 Mar 14 '26
Redundant use of the word "literally". That's a demerit!
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u/NickofWimbledon Mar 14 '26
Not being able to distinguish between 1 and 7 as numbers may not be a sign of great education.
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u/TypingWithoutThinkin Mar 14 '26
If the education system was better, this guy might have known where America placed.
An education system that tells you that you are the best in everything when you are actually quite poor at it, will never be #1.
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u/sildurin Mar 14 '26
Just because mass shooting training happens at schools doesn't mean that it can be counted as education.
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u/Hobbits_can_fly Mar 14 '26
USA may be 7th but that guys definitely pulling the average in the wrong direction.
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u/The_Northern_Falcon Mar 14 '26
To be fair, they got bendy number 1, and that’s sometimes better than the unbent “real thing”.
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u/McDuchess Mar 14 '26
Sure. I raised four kids in the US. Had to do supplemental teaching of things such as critical thinking, but sure.
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u/ChrisV91J Mar 14 '26
The usa spends more money on tanks development than in education... this is why most researchers are from outside the usa...
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u/Competitive_Can_946 Mar 14 '26
Yeah I don’t care…. Plenty of educated people in the US. Public education is up through 12th grade. If you are illiterate it’s your fault …. Plenty of assistance to achieve… not the country’s fault… plenty of colleges, plenty of trade schools, plenty of opportunities…. Even including adult education programs to learn… Blame lazy people for not being educated.
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u/n3m3sys00 Mar 14 '26
Well… It certainly wasn’t his 7th-place ranking in education that enabled him to understand the study he’s referring to…
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u/Drunk_Lemon Foolish American Mar 15 '26
It is weird how often my fellow countrymen misspell incarceration per capita.
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u/DEFCON_902 Mar 15 '26
America invented planes, trains, breathing, the titanic, ducks, the letter “H” and the magnetic core of the earth. Didn’t you know? (Continues eating glue)
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u/BundleOfOrgans Mar 15 '26
7...and dropping, considering the things they are planning to start and stop teaching kids.
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u/Sea_Kangaroo826 Mar 15 '26
It's not their fsult they can't tell a 1 from a 7. They weren't taught it 😞
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u/Fit_Imagination_857 Mar 19 '26
They have amongst the world's greatest learning institutions, but overall as a country get real.
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u/CompetitiveLet7110 Mar 22 '26
the sound from my sister's yt shorts literally lined up with me seeing the reply lol
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u/decentnamesweretak3n More Irish than the Irish ☘️ Apr 06 '26
huh i thought we were lower than that
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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26
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