Note: The views shared in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the individual opinions of the other members of The City Voice.
Have you ever seen those videos where there is some random interviewer going around with a microphone and asking the easiest questions ever conceived to man and the interviewee still somehow gets it wrong? Well I certainly have. And while the videos themselves don’t annoy me (although people with half a brain should get them correct), what does is the fact that snotty Europeans get into the comments and act so superior to Americans. It is one thing to say “How could you get this wrong?” and another thing to say “Wow, all Americans are so dumb, and this one interview sums up every American ever”. And then, if an American refutes them they make fun of school shootings leading me to get angry at Europeans vehemently for a solid 8 minutes before I realize it is probably rage bait and try to ignore it.
I concede to the fact that, on average, Europeans are smarter than Americans. But, if you never do quadratics for 15 years, you might eventually forget how to do them – and this is the case for many Americans. Geography is generally taught earlier in the education system because in general history tends to be bloody and intense and you might want people to be a bit more mature before teaching said topics. This leads to people not remembering where every country is (and when your country the size of the European Union, it makes more sense why) and in any case it is not like many Europeans can name every state. The only real difference is the fact that one is a country and one is a state, and even then most European countries are smaller or the same size as a lot of American states.
One of the main reasons for the difference in “intellect” is wealth and taxes, as “In the first quarter of 2024, almost two-thirds percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.5 percent of the total wealth” (Source). This leads to a massive disparity in the amount paid in taxes leading to the education system reflecting the area that has more money be better funded. This is more (and less) a problem in Europe, “The share of wealth held by the top 10 percent stood at 56 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023, while the bottom half held just 5 percent” (Source). This better distribution of wealth and higher taxes mean that more areas get better funded schools – but some caveats appear when you look closer. Because of these higher taxes the nominal GDP of the United States is much higher the the European Union, with the United States at around 27.7 Trillion dollars and the European Union lagging behind with only about 18.6 Trillion (Source).
I would like to point out, however, that while college is expensive, 18.6 million people attend college in the United States each year (Source). And the United States has some of the best colleges in the world with 7 out of the 10 best colleges in the world hailing from America and 11 out of 15 of the best being American, according to U.S. News & World Report (Source). This shows me that the best place to go to get an education is the United States. In fact, the only European country in the top 25 is the UK. To me. this says that the smartest people in the United States are much smarter than some of the smartest Europeans. But I understand the fact that we can’t always just take the top, we need to look at everything as a whole.
So are Europeans on average smarter than Americans? That’s up to interpretation. However this leads me to question, is being book smart better than doing better financially, agriculture or even work ethics-wise. To look at this further, a Fortune article by Eleanor Pringle writes, “in 2022 the average workweek of people between the ages of 22 and 65 was 37.5 … the average hours workers clocked in the U.S. was 38 hours a week. However, of those employees, 13% worked 49 hours or more per week, which outstripped the majority of European nations.” (Pringle) While this could be chalked up to the income inequality as I mentioned before, I believe that this is more due to the culture of the United States. The culture around the United States is always competitive whether it be through academics or sports.
As a country I believe that we are not impervious to mistakes, however I don’t believe that anyone should act better than anyone else. There are people everywhere around the world who might struggle with basic algebra and just because you don’t doesn’t give you an excuse for being rude. Only hurt people hurt people.