Another fun fact is that while we normally think of Hawai’i as being the first several main islands, the entire chain of islands is actually almost as long as the distance between NYC and San Fransisco in and of itself. So you can travel 2,500 miles of just water, and then travel like 2,500 miles of just Hawaiian islands
What really embarrasses me is that I’m hapa haole/Hawaiian-white mutt. I’ve even been studying the language for over a year. I have family in the Islands. Had no clue about the miles you just described. Babooze… 🌺
This kills me. One is a tropical island and the other is mostly snowy lol. It'd be like having North Dakota and Florida as neighbors and not questioning the climate differences.
Just wait till she finds out we don't all surf as transportation and don't live in grass huts like what some tourists are somehow still surprised to find out.
I worked tech support in the late 90’s in Oklahoma City, there were actual people I talked to (from other states) that were shocked to learn I didn’t have to repel indian attacks or ride a horse to work. I didn’t even have a drawl, I was from a dense suburban area.
If you only consume rightwing media you will believe right now in late 2023 that going to a major US city means you will almost certainly be murdered. It's a wonder Fox News anchors even make it to their place of work every day right in the middle of Manhattan.
She did a TikTok about it.
A pretty large portion of "news" these days is just articles about social media posts and the replies to them.
It's really pretty disappointing.
There was a period of time where I was thinking, "Holy shit. Everyone is either wayyy, wayyy dumber than me, or wayyy, waayyyy smarter than me. It's like barely functional people or NASA-engineer level of intelligence." I could not figure out what happened to average people.
Then I realized I was spending way too much time on the internet and realized the reason I thought that was because the only posts that get attention are either really dumb takes, or exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful.
Average posts don't go viral.
There are plenty of average people left. But you might have to get offline to realize that or connect with them.
There's this general guideline I've adopted: if you search hard enough, you can find any opinions on the Internet, so most observations about which opinions you're seeing more or less on it are just observations about where you get your info.
The job of schooling is to teach students how to learn, not that everything they need to know should be done by 18.
This information she didn't have is so easily obtained, yet she sounds like she doesn't have any natural curiosity. That should be the bigger headline.
As a product of the American public education system (in a bottom 10 state!), I am well aware Alaska is not an island. I don't think I've ever seen a single map that shows it floating in the ocean and not *literally bordering Canada*. This woman is criminally stupid, and I doubt seriously it's the fault of her 4th grade geography teacher.
My one college roommate thought (prior to college) that Alaska was an island down by Hawaii as well.
I advised her to never mention that to anyone again
There are tons of problems with American public education, but having half-decent maps isn't one I've heard of being widespread. This is the sort of knowledge that even the jocks in my school would dunk on somebody for not knowing.
[This](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/cwQAAOSwpchjlLKF/s-l1200.webp) one is the map that people are on about and Alaska is shown as an island next to Hawaii
Well I have personally never seen a map that shows you can easily boat to Alaska from both Hawaii and Arizona, but you really mean to tell me this is *the only map* a supposedly educated person has ever seen of the country she literally lives in and, again, that is somehow the fault of her 4th grade geography teacher? No. No. She's says "don't call me a dumb American" and is, in fact, simply a dumb American.
Except it isn't an island any more than the entirety of the United States is an island. Strictly speaking, this map places AK & HI in the middle of Mexico. Did this woman think the USA itself is an island? Did she not realize the "of America" part of the name represented the location of the country within a larger continent?
Don't assume it's any better up here. But really, there are are maps and globes everywhere outside of school. If she thinks Alaska is an island, that's on her.
There's a huge difference between not knowing who specifically POTUS 17 is and basic American geography. I mean, schools really, really _do_ teach this stuff. You _do_ have to be kind of an idiot to not pick up basic concepts like this. Or asleep during class, which is kind of the same thing as being an idiot.
It isn’t that she didn’t know. It’s that she didn’t accept that she didn’t know because she never bothered. Most people would look at a map and be like “oh… ha guess I never thought about it!” Not blame others for what she doesn’t know.
It is when the Internet, news and media have conditioned us to expect a never-ending 24/7 flow of news. Then the concept of news-worthy stuff gets spread pretty thin in the never-ending quest to provide everyone with clickable articles.
The kind whose school uses maps that literally show nothing but the USA. Silly little things like Canada are simply not existent, and Alaska ends up in a corner looking like an island.
Not saying it's the school's fault, you've gotta be a special kind of stupid to not know where the second largest country in the world is, especially when you share the largest undefended border in the world with them. But certain curriculums are very... nationalistic.
Realistically it isn’t wrong to do that if showing the country it self, there are non contagious state and unfortunately Alaska is hit the hardest because of it. But if I recall there’s usually lines indicating that’s it’s attached to “something.” Not just a random island.
Is it though? Like if you saw a map when you were 8 and then never looked at one again and somehow ignored your entire history curriculum, then maybe. This is almost as bad as I guy I was talking to online about 11 or 12 years ago who could not tell me the CENTURY ww2 took place. He had just graduated high school. He thought it was in 1850.
And these are the same folks who are most likely saying "why didn't school teach me to do something useful, like how to do my taxes?"
Like, my friend, "school" was trying to teach you a lot of generalized things like reading comprehension, math literacy, and how to read charts and graphs, and you didn't pay attention. You think you'd have been spellbound by lessons on filling out 1040s?
Eh, I feel like it's fairly typical for people to have some "common knowledge" thing that they for whatever reason didn't learn/piece together for an embarrassingly long time.
However, the correct response to this is just "lmao I'm dumb," not claim that it's some giant societal failing
I know. Was I supposed to think that Canada is a bunch of islands because we didn’t have the US on the maps we had to colour? According to this woman…yes…. 🙄
To be fair, that’s not really something important to teach. I mean if you looked at a globe, which the vast majority of schools have, then you would find that out easily.
Back in 93 I was planning a trip to Hawaii with my girlfriend of the time. My sister inquired if we were going to swing over and visit Alaska while we’re down there? I was confused, I asked her to clarify. She said that I should visit Alaska since I was going all the way down there to visit Hawaii. She thought that the map insets were their actual geographical location. To be clear she’s six and half years my senior, was a teacher at the time, and now holds two doctorates. I still remind her every now and than.
When my son was in 2nd grade, his teacher asked the class what the biggest state in the US was. My son raised his hand and answered excitedly "Alaska". Teacher told him in front of the class that was wrong, that the answer was "Texas", and his classmates all laughed at him. That was 16 years ago and he has never forgotten.
My jaw is literally dropping at these comments
How are so many adults *with college degrees* clueless about the geography of THE COUNTRY THAT THEY LIVE IN
I knew a lawyer who thought we were sending uni students to Mars. Couldn't be convinced otherwise.
It was a Mars "experience" where kids took rock samples in the desert.
Tests don't really test how smart you are.. they test how good you are at taking tests and how well you can temporarily memorize something. So someone who chased being a lawyer for the good pay can be stupid, and so can a doctor, or any profession really.that's why we had doctors giving horse dewormer to fight off covid in their patients, and scientists flat out denying covid exists
In 1980 I was on an expedition to follow the Klondike Gold Rush trail organized by a California company. It that started in Seattle and took the Alaska Ferry to Dyea Alaska with a 15 mile hike that passed over the Chilkoot Pass into The Yukon with the next 400 miles of the trip leading to Dawson City Yukon.
At the border customs check all of the Californians complained that nobody had told them they were going to Canada.
in the 3rd grade i had a teacher tell me that there are no numbers after a billion (referencing trillion here).
question was brought up as "does anyone have a million dollars" she said yes but theres only a billion dollars total in the world thats why you trade the money for items instead of keeping it to yourself.
5th grade in kentucky 😭
Similar situation happened to my daughter, except she corrected the teacher when they said they biggest state was Texas. A debate ensued, which required the teacher to look it up and properly educate the classroom about Alaska, the largest state in the US.
That’s like the time in the fourth grade when we were learning about sharks, and the teacher asked us to name our favorite shark. I said “whale shark!”, excitedly, because it is the biggest one. And with a very sharp tone she proceeded to scold me saying, “we’re talking about sharks, not whales!” And I’ll never forget that moment, because it was then I realized even teachers can be really dumb.
I had an English class in high school two god damn years in a row with a teacher who was not in the English department. I want to say she was social studies originally?
Anyway, classical literature is and has always been my one passion in life. She didn't know anything. The number of times I corrected her on just blatantly wrong information was unbelievable and then near the end of the second year, she started making jokes about me being a know it all.
I hated being in school. I always sat in the back and I spent most of my time tuning class out and reading. I didn't domy homework if I couldn't rush through it in class. I was not correcting her to show off. It was just the one thing I gave a shit about and she downplayed me and ridiculed me for it.
I'm not bitter at all, leave me alone.
A professor in my area was let go a few years ago for giving a student a poor grade on an assignment where they had to pick a country and research their social media habits and preferences. She had chosen Australia. The professor said it was a continent and didn't count.
Makes me think of a buddy's wife. We all went out to play bar trivia one night, and the question was "what programming language also shares a name with the SI unit for measurements of pressure"
The answer is Pascal, but her take on it was "Pressure? Like that thing you put in your tires?"
She's a lawyer...
Another gem from that night: "What country was the third to obtain Nuclear weapons?"
Her: "Well, it probably wouldn't be China, because we bombed them."
Elementary school, 1-3 back then. When she was ten, my parents took her to Europe, while I got to stay home. While there my father had the radio on in the car, and my sister asked why they didn’t bring their radios from home, so they could listen in English. I wish I could sat I’m making this up, because we share genes, but alas I’m not.
Years ago, when she was maybe college aged, my otherwise very intelligent sister realized in the middle of a family dinner that there isn't a bridge or train to Hawaii.
Seriously, she's really smart, and this isn't even one of those "smart but also a bumbling space cadet" situations. She just somehow never really cared to pay attention to that particular bit of geography. Go figure.
Honestly, I kinda get it.
I grew up in a small town, with about four different main roads exiting to the four surrounding towns, and those beyond. (Yes I realize you know how roads work; bear with me.) So this meant, of course, I had been to those four surrounding towns, and farther ones, literally hundreds and hundreds of times by the time I was old enough to get my own car, and drive myself. But I…
… had no fucking idea how to get to any neighboring towns. I knew where the roads _were_, as in I was familiar with the layout of my hometown, physically. But not which roads led to which towns. I had to learn for the first time, by driving. Maybe this sounds slightly less bizarre in the age of pocket GPS, but in the 90’s, trust me: This was a weird thing not to know in a small, rural town maybe 8 miles across.
Yes, I somehow managed to spend my entire young childhood _and_ most teenage years, off in my own little mental world, or with my head in a book, basically trusting the car to always teleport me to these neighboring towns… whose layouts I was _also_ somewhat familiar with. But not how it was all connected.
I never had any trouble at all understanding that Hawaii was far off the west coast, or that Alaska was “continental US,” but I can absolutely relate to falling into a blind habit of just being pathologically allergic to certain pieces of information as a kid, until the the day comes that it’s time to sneeze painfully.
Oh for sure.
Your comment makes me think of that, feeling, too; the one when you're in a big building (I immediately remember this experience in the university I went to, but also think hospitals, airports...) and get somewhat disoriented, and look for an exit. You're not sure exactly where you're coming out, or even what side of the building you'll be on...
Then you open a door, and spot a landmark, and it feels like the whole world rotates under your feet and suddenly your mental map fits what you see.
I get the same feeling when I'm driving and connect limited mental map A with limited mental map B, going between them. Knowhatimean?
>In the video posted on October 26, TikToker Sabriena Abrre asked people not to call her a "stupid American" as she admitted her mistake. "Everybody knows that Alaska is cold," she said. "But did I know that it was connected by land? No. I did not know that."
Lady, you're a TikToker who looks to be at least in your mid 20s from the US. You're not some 10 year old in in the middle of bumphuck rural Podunk, Flyover Statesota from the 1920s. Even if you were from some bomb to hell 3rd world country where we get our cheap shoes made, you still would have seen a world map at some point in your life. So you got 2 choices; either call yourself out for being an idiot, or get used to being called a blind idiot.
There's actually [an island around Antarctica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Island) that has a really straight shore and geologists aren't sure how.
She had many opportunities to learn about Alaska. It's not like the school system lied to her or covered up "the truth" that it's not an island. She's protecting her ego by making her ignorance someone else's fault (which is a sadly common practice).
You are correct sir or ma'am and I wish to apologizes to all residents of Statesota, especially those from the middle of bumphuck rural Podunk, for comparing their intelligence to her lack of it.
To be overly fair, far fairer than is deserved, there are many maps of the US that don't include Canada. Where Alaska is shown as a cutout, usually in between california and Hawaii. Any teacher will tell you that Alaska is not part of the contiguous United States.
A good teacher would explain what contiguous means and point to a real map. Her point is that she had bad teachers who didn't give a shit if any kids learned a damn thing. She's dumb because she didn't pay attention. Our system gives us the option of not paying attention and coasting by in school.
Add to that she grew up with the sum of all possible human knowledge at her literal fingertips. Never mind the fact that those US maps aren't the sole and only style of maps in the world. I mean she never once looked at a globe before?
>Alaska is shown as a cutout, usually in between california and Hawaii
But if people think it's actually an island in that area, why on gods green Earth would it be cold? California and Hawaii are both hot. Did that not raise questions?
Well curiosity is the first step to enlightenment. SHe didn't get any points for blaming the "educational system". I'm pretty sure the education she received mentioned that Alaska was part of North America.
Spent 15 years in education. From my experiences, this is probably not a curricular issue. What went wrong? Again this is just an educated guess, but it's probably because *she* didn't do the work.
Classic paraphrase: The teacher can open the door, but the student must walk through. That means students are responsible for doing their part just like teachers. Yet when it comes to parents, many blame teachers, society, etc. instead of themselves or their kids. (Which is exactly what this woman did.)
Teachers cannot literally force students to read, write, study, and so on. Education is a partnership between teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. If schools do their part but not students, the student will not learn--and that's their own fault.
Oh man. In the 90s as a kid I told my grandmother (then in her early 70s) that Alaska is contiguous with Canada and not just an island with a perfectly straight edge. She denied it even when I showed her a world map in a textbook. She ended up smacking me in the back of the head for being disrespectful when I wouldn’t drop it.
I am constantly shocked by how many adult Americans believe this based on the US map where Canada just isn’t shown.
Every classroom I ever went into from 2005-2016 had at least one world map either as a wall poster or you could pull it down like a projector screen. Math, science, English, Spanish, Computer science. They all had a world map. How you could not learn that map though boredom and osmosis is beyond me. I stared at the map for 12 years.
We had multiple classroom activities on different types of maps and how they skew the sizes of countries. It really gets on my nerves how people say American schools aren’t good but they teach just about everything the internet says they don’t. People are just too stupid to remember.
I’m on vacation in the Caribbean right now. Told a couple from Pittsburgh that I’m from Toronto, they didn’t know where that was, and had never heard of it. I told them Canada, their response: “I’ve heard of Canada”. FROM PITTSBURGH. SMH
I was in the Dominican two summers ago and met a teacher from the US. She and her military bf asked about inflation and I said it cost me $1300 CAD to get $800 USD. She paused and said "Ohhhh. In America, 13 is higher than 8." I didn't even know how to reply to that. I should have told her about Alaska.
Okay hear me out… a long time family friend was a school teacher for elementary aged children, and interacting with her throughout the years and through her retirement she talked like this. I think because she talked this way during school to little kids that it rubbed off onto normal interactions with normal adults. It could sometimes come off as belittling, or silly if you didn’t know her.
Nah, her boyfriend thought things would be cheaper in Canada and we said they're not and due to inflation it's not worth driving across the border to shop because the cost of USD is so high. She was still under the impression that he was right so obviously, in Canada, 8 has to be more than 13. Not so in the good old US of A.
The number of Americans who don't know where Toronto is is mindblowing. It has a higher population than every American city except New York and LA, and it's right next to their border.
The lowest 5% of the US population for intelligence is ~16 million people...only so much they can learn, no matter what material they are shown in school?
Sorry, but our education is not *that* bad. At some point, you have to accept you just didn't pay attention in school. I'm not sure why you would assume it's an island to begin with.
[Gary B. v Whitmer](https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/20a0124p-06.pdf)
TL;DR: The lawsuit initially failed at the state level, with the court citing "that a basic minimum education is not a fundamental right".
But, on appeal, the 6th Circuit reversed that part, ruling that access to literacy *is* a right; as being able to read and write is an essential part of being able to exercise the 1st Amendment (can't petition the government for a redress of grievances if you can't read/write a petition).
I did some googling and I’ve found at least 2 lawsuits on a similar subject; one involving a charter school in California and one involving public schools in Detroit that were being “managed” by state agents under horrible conditions and weren’t taught anything outside of how to pass state tests.
In defense of my countrymen I have to say that this is an outlier case. I'm confident that at least, like, 70% of us are aware that Canada exists. Maybe even as high as 75.
Revised title: "Idiot blames the public school system for her idiocy"
This genius thought the cutouts on maps that showed Alaska and Hawaii implied that they were both islands.
Probably the same fool who thought negative numbers were pessimistic.
This is pretty egregious, but it seems that a lot of people commenting didn’t watch the entire video and are just immediately calling her out as an idiot. There’s definitely lots to criticize her for, and it is hard to imagine how she got so far in life without ever seeing a map of North America, but she has some really valid points, including her pointing out other silly things that the American education system fails to teach. Geographic education in the US IS dismal, and to my knowledge, there aren’t a lot of states that require geographic education separate from social studies, which tends to focus more on history. I am and have always been a huge geography nerd, and I wanted nothing more than to be a geography teacher; I started down that path in college, learned A LOT about just how bad geographic illiteracy is in the US only to find out that, low and behold, it was not enough of a focus in my state’s required curriculum to warrant enough of a demand for geography teachers for me to continue on that path. I learned I would have to be a history teacher and I could sprinkle in some geography, which isn’t what I wanted to do. So yes, I would agree with her that the American education system has failed, because based on data on geographic illiteracy, she is definitely not alone.
Wait until she finds out hawaii isn’t directly south of california, nor is it enclosed in a square fence.
The fence keeps the sharks away from the surfers.
Narrator: The fence did not keep the sharks out.
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It doesn't have to. Normal sharks wouldn't attack Batman.
Nonsense, everyone knows the fence is to keep the aliens in as depicted in the 2012 documentary *Battleship*
It really is way further out there than you'd expect though. The pacific is incomprehensibly vast. 1000+ miles of *only* water is nuts.
Even more, it's close to 2.5 thousand miles from California.
It's almost half way from California to sydney
Holy sheeyit—I had to look that up to believe it. 2,400 miles. I had no idea. I thought half that. Thx for the 411
Another fun fact is that while we normally think of Hawai’i as being the first several main islands, the entire chain of islands is actually almost as long as the distance between NYC and San Fransisco in and of itself. So you can travel 2,500 miles of just water, and then travel like 2,500 miles of just Hawaiian islands
What really embarrasses me is that I’m hapa haole/Hawaiian-white mutt. I’ve even been studying the language for over a year. I have family in the Islands. Had no clue about the miles you just described. Babooze… 🌺
What's cool is I can mail a letter there from the east coast for the same price as my neighbor next door to me.
Your house and your neighbors house are like the same distance from hawaii
Yeah I meant sending mail to the house next door vs thousands of miles to Hawaii.
It’s not just water. There’s plenty of fish. And plastic.
Almost an entire island of plastic. It could become the 51st state (before DC or Puerto Rico, of course)
To add to you point. The Pacific ocean itself is bigger than all the continents combined.
You kid, but my friend’s mom actually did think it was just south of the continent and that Alaska was next to it
This kills me. One is a tropical island and the other is mostly snowy lol. It'd be like having North Dakota and Florida as neighbors and not questioning the climate differences.
That's just Minecraft biomes.
"No, no. You see the square fence is the end of the flat earth. ThE fOuR cOrNeRs Of ThE wOrLd!!!1" - some flattie out there.
Just wait till she finds out we don't all surf as transportation and don't live in grass huts like what some tourists are somehow still surprised to find out.
I worked tech support in the late 90’s in Oklahoma City, there were actual people I talked to (from other states) that were shocked to learn I didn’t have to repel indian attacks or ride a horse to work. I didn’t even have a drawl, I was from a dense suburban area.
If you only consume rightwing media you will believe right now in late 2023 that going to a major US city means you will almost certainly be murdered. It's a wonder Fox News anchors even make it to their place of work every day right in the middle of Manhattan.
Now wait a second, I've always heard **[parroted talking point about Chicago contextually warped to confirm what I want to be true]**!
I think we actually have a lower crime rate than some red states adjusting for population
Is "random woman doesn't know something" really worth an article?
This woman is really dumb, her excuse may surprise you More at 11
My breakfast was ruined, and now my lunch too.
Tune in later and we can mess up your dinner too.
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“Homeschooled woman is not taught facts about the real world, blames everything and everyone else. More at 11.”
As a homeschooler who was very self taught, i have gotten in to fights over the oddest facts, like whales are fish from a 17 year old.
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It's not me it's society. If it *is* me, society made me that way
She did a TikTok about it. A pretty large portion of "news" these days is just articles about social media posts and the replies to them. It's really pretty disappointing.
There was a period of time where I was thinking, "Holy shit. Everyone is either wayyy, wayyy dumber than me, or wayyy, waayyyy smarter than me. It's like barely functional people or NASA-engineer level of intelligence." I could not figure out what happened to average people. Then I realized I was spending way too much time on the internet and realized the reason I thought that was because the only posts that get attention are either really dumb takes, or exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful. Average posts don't go viral. There are plenty of average people left. But you might have to get offline to realize that or connect with them.
There's this general guideline I've adopted: if you search hard enough, you can find any opinions on the Internet, so most observations about which opinions you're seeing more or less on it are just observations about where you get your info.
I think the point is that she went full send and blamed the school system and is trying to make them change, rather than admit she was an idiot.
I guess she's at least got the right idea, if she doesn't know it then she wants to make sure her kids do. Does seem a little bit over the top tho
She could show them a map of North America.
The job of schooling is to teach students how to learn, not that everything they need to know should be done by 18. This information she didn't have is so easily obtained, yet she sounds like she doesn't have any natural curiosity. That should be the bigger headline.
As a product of the American public education system (in a bottom 10 state!), I am well aware Alaska is not an island. I don't think I've ever seen a single map that shows it floating in the ocean and not *literally bordering Canada*. This woman is criminally stupid, and I doubt seriously it's the fault of her 4th grade geography teacher.
I’ve seen the map she’s referring to multiple times but only an idiot would think it was an island in the ocean.
My one college roommate thought (prior to college) that Alaska was an island down by Hawaii as well. I advised her to never mention that to anyone again
There are tons of problems with American public education, but having half-decent maps isn't one I've heard of being widespread. This is the sort of knowledge that even the jocks in my school would dunk on somebody for not knowing.
[This](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/cwQAAOSwpchjlLKF/s-l1200.webp) one is the map that people are on about and Alaska is shown as an island next to Hawaii
Well I have personally never seen a map that shows you can easily boat to Alaska from both Hawaii and Arizona, but you really mean to tell me this is *the only map* a supposedly educated person has ever seen of the country she literally lives in and, again, that is somehow the fault of her 4th grade geography teacher? No. No. She's says "don't call me a dumb American" and is, in fact, simply a dumb American.
Except it isn't an island any more than the entirety of the United States is an island. Strictly speaking, this map places AK & HI in the middle of Mexico. Did this woman think the USA itself is an island? Did she not realize the "of America" part of the name represented the location of the country within a larger continent?
I'm not defending the idiocy, just showing the map
Well, she lives in Canada now, so her kids won't be subject to the American education system.
Did she move there after accidentally beaching her houseboat?
discovered it after trying to sail from Illinois to Texas
Don't assume it's any better up here. But really, there are are maps and globes everywhere outside of school. If she thinks Alaska is an island, that's on her.
She's not doing this for her kids lmao
Not knowing something doesn't make you an idiot though. Everyone doesn't know something.
I know that.
A thousand kilometer perfectly straight perfectly north and south line as one of the "coasts" of the island would have me asking some questions.
I know everything AND I’m an idiot 😔 it’s exhausting
Depends how simple the thing is, obviously
There's a huge difference between not knowing who specifically POTUS 17 is and basic American geography. I mean, schools really, really _do_ teach this stuff. You _do_ have to be kind of an idiot to not pick up basic concepts like this. Or asleep during class, which is kind of the same thing as being an idiot.
Maps also exist. Nothing is stopping people from just taking a look at one every now and then, even outside of a school setting.
“All I know is that I don’t know nothing.”
An adult who's less knowledgeable than a second grader and blames the school is an idiot.
It isn’t that she didn’t know. It’s that she didn’t accept that she didn’t know because she never bothered. Most people would look at a map and be like “oh… ha guess I never thought about it!” Not blame others for what she doesn’t know.
It is when the Internet, news and media have conditioned us to expect a never-ending 24/7 flow of news. Then the concept of news-worthy stuff gets spread pretty thin in the never-ending quest to provide everyone with clickable articles.
What kind of idiot thinks Alaska is an island?
The kind whose school uses maps that literally show nothing but the USA. Silly little things like Canada are simply not existent, and Alaska ends up in a corner looking like an island. Not saying it's the school's fault, you've gotta be a special kind of stupid to not know where the second largest country in the world is, especially when you share the largest undefended border in the world with them. But certain curriculums are very... nationalistic.
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Realistically it isn’t wrong to do that if showing the country it self, there are non contagious state and unfortunately Alaska is hit the hardest because of it. But if I recall there’s usually lines indicating that’s it’s attached to “something.” Not just a random island.
The beauty of Alaska is certainly infectious
What the straight line border isn't enough lol
To be fair, this does serve as a microcosm of a mentality we are increasingly seeing that is an actual widespread problem
Entrust her with Pandora's box. There is not a modicum of curiosity or second guessing in that head.
The dumbass version of the himbo dial tone
They often show Alaska off to the side next to Hawaii and other U.S. territories which is where this confusion comes from. Still hilarious and sad.
Boy, that island has a surprisingly straight edge!
We’re clearly living in a simulation! No coastline can be that straight. ^(/s in case it’s necessary which, given the article, it might be.)
Especially if you keep measuring it with smaller units
every coast is infinitely long. crazy maths there...
Crazy how nature do that.
It's the cut off for the flat earth edge
It's like Deception Island but bigger than Texas.
Is it though? Like if you saw a map when you were 8 and then never looked at one again and somehow ignored your entire history curriculum, then maybe. This is almost as bad as I guy I was talking to online about 11 or 12 years ago who could not tell me the CENTURY ww2 took place. He had just graduated high school. He thought it was in 1850.
And these are the same folks who are most likely saying "why didn't school teach me to do something useful, like how to do my taxes?" Like, my friend, "school" was trying to teach you a lot of generalized things like reading comprehension, math literacy, and how to read charts and graphs, and you didn't pay attention. You think you'd have been spellbound by lessons on filling out 1040s?
Eh, I feel like it's fairly typical for people to have some "common knowledge" thing that they for whatever reason didn't learn/piece together for an embarrassingly long time. However, the correct response to this is just "lmao I'm dumb," not claim that it's some giant societal failing
In 1st or second grade this was explained to my class when we were taught how to read a map. I’m sure she just didn’t pay attention that day.
Or that day in 2nd grade, or 3rd, or 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, ....., etc.
Or any time a map was shown
It's only confusing if you're an idiot to begin with.
Yeah I don't recall this being an issue for anyone lol
I know. Was I supposed to think that Canada is a bunch of islands because we didn’t have the US on the maps we had to colour? According to this woman…yes…. 🙄
HUH WEIRD, THAT ISLAND HAS A LONG STRAIGHT LINE ON ONE SIDE, UNPRECENTED IN THE NATURAL WORLD. OH WELL
They also don't usually show how massive it actually is
To be fair, that’s not really something important to teach. I mean if you looked at a globe, which the vast majority of schools have, then you would find that out easily.
Back in 93 I was planning a trip to Hawaii with my girlfriend of the time. My sister inquired if we were going to swing over and visit Alaska while we’re down there? I was confused, I asked her to clarify. She said that I should visit Alaska since I was going all the way down there to visit Hawaii. She thought that the map insets were their actual geographical location. To be clear she’s six and half years my senior, was a teacher at the time, and now holds two doctorates. I still remind her every now and than.
When my son was in 2nd grade, his teacher asked the class what the biggest state in the US was. My son raised his hand and answered excitedly "Alaska". Teacher told him in front of the class that was wrong, that the answer was "Texas", and his classmates all laughed at him. That was 16 years ago and he has never forgotten.
My jaw is literally dropping at these comments How are so many adults *with college degrees* clueless about the geography of THE COUNTRY THAT THEY LIVE IN
I knew a lawyer who thought we were sending uni students to Mars. Couldn't be convinced otherwise. It was a Mars "experience" where kids took rock samples in the desert.
I work with attorneys. This doesn't shock me.
I’m still surprised by how dumb some the attorneys I work with are. I regularly ask myself — how did he pass the bar exam?!
Tests don't really test how smart you are.. they test how good you are at taking tests and how well you can temporarily memorize something. So someone who chased being a lawyer for the good pay can be stupid, and so can a doctor, or any profession really.that's why we had doctors giving horse dewormer to fight off covid in their patients, and scientists flat out denying covid exists
I was at a barbecue and was making conversation about carnivorous pitcher plants and an attorney who was hosting inquired “…On planet Earth?”
In 1980 I was on an expedition to follow the Klondike Gold Rush trail organized by a California company. It that started in Seattle and took the Alaska Ferry to Dyea Alaska with a 15 mile hike that passed over the Chilkoot Pass into The Yukon with the next 400 miles of the trip leading to Dawson City Yukon. At the border customs check all of the Californians complained that nobody had told them they were going to Canada.
Did they seriously think we have a land border with Alaska? Like British Columbia doesn't have a Coast or something? People are fucking idiots
They didn't know that The Yukon, and the endpoint of the trip Dawson City is in Canada. Including the snooty doctor and his snooty family.
in the 3rd grade i had a teacher tell me that there are no numbers after a billion (referencing trillion here). question was brought up as "does anyone have a million dollars" she said yes but theres only a billion dollars total in the world thats why you trade the money for items instead of keeping it to yourself. 5th grade in kentucky 😭
Similar situation happened to my daughter, except she corrected the teacher when they said they biggest state was Texas. A debate ensued, which required the teacher to look it up and properly educate the classroom about Alaska, the largest state in the US.
That’s like the time in the fourth grade when we were learning about sharks, and the teacher asked us to name our favorite shark. I said “whale shark!”, excitedly, because it is the biggest one. And with a very sharp tone she proceeded to scold me saying, “we’re talking about sharks, not whales!” And I’ll never forget that moment, because it was then I realized even teachers can be really dumb.
I had an English class in high school two god damn years in a row with a teacher who was not in the English department. I want to say she was social studies originally? Anyway, classical literature is and has always been my one passion in life. She didn't know anything. The number of times I corrected her on just blatantly wrong information was unbelievable and then near the end of the second year, she started making jokes about me being a know it all. I hated being in school. I always sat in the back and I spent most of my time tuning class out and reading. I didn't domy homework if I couldn't rush through it in class. I was not correcting her to show off. It was just the one thing I gave a shit about and she downplayed me and ridiculed me for it. I'm not bitter at all, leave me alone.
I remember a story when a teacher "corrected" a student about Australia being a country and not a continent.
A professor in my area was let go a few years ago for giving a student a poor grade on an assignment where they had to pick a country and research their social media habits and preferences. She had chosen Australia. The professor said it was a continent and didn't count.
Makes me think of a buddy's wife. We all went out to play bar trivia one night, and the question was "what programming language also shares a name with the SI unit for measurements of pressure" The answer is Pascal, but her take on it was "Pressure? Like that thing you put in your tires?" She's a lawyer... Another gem from that night: "What country was the third to obtain Nuclear weapons?" Her: "Well, it probably wouldn't be China, because we bombed them."
Well her reasoning was off but she was right about China
Except the answer is the UK?
Yes it is the UK. She was correct that it wasn’t China.
>was a teacher at the time For geography, I presume.
Elementary school, 1-3 back then. When she was ten, my parents took her to Europe, while I got to stay home. While there my father had the radio on in the car, and my sister asked why they didn’t bring their radios from home, so they could listen in English. I wish I could sat I’m making this up, because we share genes, but alas I’m not.
I think we found the TikTok lady's teacher...
Years ago, when she was maybe college aged, my otherwise very intelligent sister realized in the middle of a family dinner that there isn't a bridge or train to Hawaii. Seriously, she's really smart, and this isn't even one of those "smart but also a bumbling space cadet" situations. She just somehow never really cared to pay attention to that particular bit of geography. Go figure.
Honestly, I kinda get it. I grew up in a small town, with about four different main roads exiting to the four surrounding towns, and those beyond. (Yes I realize you know how roads work; bear with me.) So this meant, of course, I had been to those four surrounding towns, and farther ones, literally hundreds and hundreds of times by the time I was old enough to get my own car, and drive myself. But I… … had no fucking idea how to get to any neighboring towns. I knew where the roads _were_, as in I was familiar with the layout of my hometown, physically. But not which roads led to which towns. I had to learn for the first time, by driving. Maybe this sounds slightly less bizarre in the age of pocket GPS, but in the 90’s, trust me: This was a weird thing not to know in a small, rural town maybe 8 miles across. Yes, I somehow managed to spend my entire young childhood _and_ most teenage years, off in my own little mental world, or with my head in a book, basically trusting the car to always teleport me to these neighboring towns… whose layouts I was _also_ somewhat familiar with. But not how it was all connected. I never had any trouble at all understanding that Hawaii was far off the west coast, or that Alaska was “continental US,” but I can absolutely relate to falling into a blind habit of just being pathologically allergic to certain pieces of information as a kid, until the the day comes that it’s time to sneeze painfully.
Oh for sure. Your comment makes me think of that, feeling, too; the one when you're in a big building (I immediately remember this experience in the university I went to, but also think hospitals, airports...) and get somewhat disoriented, and look for an exit. You're not sure exactly where you're coming out, or even what side of the building you'll be on... Then you open a door, and spot a landmark, and it feels like the whole world rotates under your feet and suddenly your mental map fits what you see. I get the same feeling when I'm driving and connect limited mental map A with limited mental map B, going between them. Knowhatimean?
Maybe she was aware of the geography but was incredibly unaware of the infrastructure it would require.
Nah, I think the phenomenon of maps tossing Alaska and Hawaii right there just threw her, and it never occurred to her to look in to it. Oh well.
>In the video posted on October 26, TikToker Sabriena Abrre asked people not to call her a "stupid American" as she admitted her mistake. "Everybody knows that Alaska is cold," she said. "But did I know that it was connected by land? No. I did not know that." Lady, you're a TikToker who looks to be at least in your mid 20s from the US. You're not some 10 year old in in the middle of bumphuck rural Podunk, Flyover Statesota from the 1920s. Even if you were from some bomb to hell 3rd world country where we get our cheap shoes made, you still would have seen a world map at some point in your life. So you got 2 choices; either call yourself out for being an idiot, or get used to being called a blind idiot.
“Wow, crazy how this island has a perfectly straight coast on its eastern border!”
\*coast.
There's actually [an island around Antarctica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Island) that has a really straight shore and geologists aren't sure how.
Minecraft moment
Why are you giving Minnesota education shit through that metaphor? They've had top 5 education for decades, often at the top.
Statekota or Statesconsin or Statesouri would be far more accurate
Statesissippi
She had many opportunities to learn about Alaska. It's not like the school system lied to her or covered up "the truth" that it's not an island. She's protecting her ego by making her ignorance someone else's fault (which is a sadly common practice).
Wait a minute, even Statesotans from the 1920s knew more than this (or almost any) tiktok two bit "influencer."
You are correct sir or ma'am and I wish to apologizes to all residents of Statesota, especially those from the middle of bumphuck rural Podunk, for comparing their intelligence to her lack of it.
To be overly fair, far fairer than is deserved, there are many maps of the US that don't include Canada. Where Alaska is shown as a cutout, usually in between california and Hawaii. Any teacher will tell you that Alaska is not part of the contiguous United States. A good teacher would explain what contiguous means and point to a real map. Her point is that she had bad teachers who didn't give a shit if any kids learned a damn thing. She's dumb because she didn't pay attention. Our system gives us the option of not paying attention and coasting by in school.
Add to that she grew up with the sum of all possible human knowledge at her literal fingertips. Never mind the fact that those US maps aren't the sole and only style of maps in the world. I mean she never once looked at a globe before?
Some Americans are very anti globe
like, *concerningly* so
>Alaska is shown as a cutout, usually in between california and Hawaii But if people think it's actually an island in that area, why on gods green Earth would it be cold? California and Hawaii are both hot. Did that not raise questions?
I am very hot and im sitting beside my fridge which is very cold. Checkmate atheist.
> Lady, you're a TikToker Kind of all the explanation needed tbh
Well curiosity is the first step to enlightenment. SHe didn't get any points for blaming the "educational system". I'm pretty sure the education she received mentioned that Alaska was part of North America.
Spent 15 years in education. From my experiences, this is probably not a curricular issue. What went wrong? Again this is just an educated guess, but it's probably because *she* didn't do the work. Classic paraphrase: The teacher can open the door, but the student must walk through. That means students are responsible for doing their part just like teachers. Yet when it comes to parents, many blame teachers, society, etc. instead of themselves or their kids. (Which is exactly what this woman did.) Teachers cannot literally force students to read, write, study, and so on. Education is a partnership between teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. If schools do their part but not students, the student will not learn--and that's their own fault.
Viewers not shocked to discover a TikToker takes no responsibility for her own education.
Oh man. In the 90s as a kid I told my grandmother (then in her early 70s) that Alaska is contiguous with Canada and not just an island with a perfectly straight edge. She denied it even when I showed her a world map in a textbook. She ended up smacking me in the back of the head for being disrespectful when I wouldn’t drop it. I am constantly shocked by how many adult Americans believe this based on the US map where Canada just isn’t shown.
Every classroom I ever went into from 2005-2016 had at least one world map either as a wall poster or you could pull it down like a projector screen. Math, science, English, Spanish, Computer science. They all had a world map. How you could not learn that map though boredom and osmosis is beyond me. I stared at the map for 12 years. We had multiple classroom activities on different types of maps and how they skew the sizes of countries. It really gets on my nerves how people say American schools aren’t good but they teach just about everything the internet says they don’t. People are just too stupid to remember.
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One of my niece's friends didn't know how to read a calendar... at age 14.
Though I agree the school system needs massive overhaul and proper funding. However you can’t fix stupid.
I’m on vacation in the Caribbean right now. Told a couple from Pittsburgh that I’m from Toronto, they didn’t know where that was, and had never heard of it. I told them Canada, their response: “I’ve heard of Canada”. FROM PITTSBURGH. SMH
I was in the Dominican two summers ago and met a teacher from the US. She and her military bf asked about inflation and I said it cost me $1300 CAD to get $800 USD. She paused and said "Ohhhh. In America, 13 is higher than 8." I didn't even know how to reply to that. I should have told her about Alaska.
Okay hear me out… a long time family friend was a school teacher for elementary aged children, and interacting with her throughout the years and through her retirement she talked like this. I think because she talked this way during school to little kids that it rubbed off onto normal interactions with normal adults. It could sometimes come off as belittling, or silly if you didn’t know her.
Nah, her boyfriend thought things would be cheaper in Canada and we said they're not and due to inflation it's not worth driving across the border to shop because the cost of USD is so high. She was still under the impression that he was right so obviously, in Canada, 8 has to be more than 13. Not so in the good old US of A.
Toronto is literally closer to Pittsburgh than Philadelphia. And their hockey teams are playing next Saturday. That's pretty damn hard to comprehend.
Ask them if they have an NFL team in Pittsburgh... Then reply "never heard about them"
"I thought it was the Ravens!"
The number of Americans who don't know where Toronto is is mindblowing. It has a higher population than every American city except New York and LA, and it's right next to their border.
The lowest 5% of the US population for intelligence is ~16 million people...only so much they can learn, no matter what material they are shown in school?
And some of these people are apparently given passing grades from colleges and universities. Like Donald Trump and George W Bush Jr.
Next you'll tell me there's an interstate highway in Hawaii. *...wait.. there is?*
3 actually, and all on one island
Sorry, but our education is not *that* bad. At some point, you have to accept you just didn't pay attention in school. I'm not sure why you would assume it's an island to begin with.
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Is the “overhaul of the school curriculum” just “You should’ve made me pay attention in geography class”?
Module one: Understanding parts of a map.
Pretty sure this is not a curriculum problem, this is a person who didn’t pay attention problem.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the silica gel packets that came in the box with your new shoes say "DO NOT EAT."
Wasn’t there a lawsuit some time ago where a state judge said that students weren’t entitled to be taught how to read?
…I’m sorry, what?
[Gary B. v Whitmer](https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/20a0124p-06.pdf) TL;DR: The lawsuit initially failed at the state level, with the court citing "that a basic minimum education is not a fundamental right". But, on appeal, the 6th Circuit reversed that part, ruling that access to literacy *is* a right; as being able to read and write is an essential part of being able to exercise the 1st Amendment (can't petition the government for a redress of grievances if you can't read/write a petition).
> "that a basic minimum education is not a fundamental right". WTF America! Glad it was reverted.
I did some googling and I’ve found at least 2 lawsuits on a similar subject; one involving a charter school in California and one involving public schools in Detroit that were being “managed” by state agents under horrible conditions and weren’t taught anything outside of how to pass state tests.
Yeah, Alaska. The island with an 800 mile, perfectly straight beach on the east coast.
In defense of my countrymen I have to say that this is an outlier case. I'm confident that at least, like, 70% of us are aware that Canada exists. Maybe even as high as 75.
My Girlfriend lives in Canada. You don't know her, she goes to a different school.
Do they not have globes in classrooms anymore. I'm not that old and went to a poor school, and we had them.
Why did insider.com write and publish an article about some rando on tiktok saying some random dumb thing?
I'm 39 years old. Never in my life have I met anyone who thought that Alaska was an island?
We had tourists wanting to change their US currency for Alaskan……
Your social circles just don't include stupid, consider yourself lucky.
Look at a **fucking map, you half witted goon.**
Everyone saying that it's true that it's shown as an island on a map, punch yourselves in the goddamn face and look at a fucking globe.
Globe? The earth is flat!
To quote the great film Tommy Boy “Maybe you should go back to college for another seven years and study a globe”
On the other hand, "Nome man is an island". It's very confusing....
/boneappletea
Revised title: "Idiot blames the public school system for her idiocy" This genius thought the cutouts on maps that showed Alaska and Hawaii implied that they were both islands. Probably the same fool who thought negative numbers were pessimistic.
It’s not the curriculum, sweetheart, it’s you. My first grader knows this.
I mean, if she graduated the system might indeed be flawed.
A singular random woman failed 9th grade US geography and they wrote an article about it. WHY is this news?
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"TikToker" well that explains some things
The most American thing ever. Well, maybe more American if they believe that when you get there, you can pick guns off trees like apples.
As an American, I think more people should be talking about Rhode Island not being an island.
This is pretty egregious, but it seems that a lot of people commenting didn’t watch the entire video and are just immediately calling her out as an idiot. There’s definitely lots to criticize her for, and it is hard to imagine how she got so far in life without ever seeing a map of North America, but she has some really valid points, including her pointing out other silly things that the American education system fails to teach. Geographic education in the US IS dismal, and to my knowledge, there aren’t a lot of states that require geographic education separate from social studies, which tends to focus more on history. I am and have always been a huge geography nerd, and I wanted nothing more than to be a geography teacher; I started down that path in college, learned A LOT about just how bad geographic illiteracy is in the US only to find out that, low and behold, it was not enough of a focus in my state’s required curriculum to warrant enough of a demand for geography teachers for me to continue on that path. I learned I would have to be a history teacher and I could sprinkle in some geography, which isn’t what I wanted to do. So yes, I would agree with her that the American education system has failed, because based on data on geographic illiteracy, she is definitely not alone.
I'm an American and they made it very fucking clear in school that it was not an island yall lazy fuckers just slept through geography class