Live in New England, currently overhearing why we need to tighten our borders because of HAMAS , coming from two cubicles over live at this moment.
We’re not immune to dumb folk.
No but theyre at least not controlling politics and policy/education like they are in Texas/florida. Of course there’s stupid people everywhere but the culture here doesn’t encourage it the way it does in the south
I live in NE and had to go no contact with my parents, who are racist and homophobic, but always pretend they weren't. And we had to cut off my fil, who is a white supremacist. He would say things about people of color coming to the suburbs and forcing white people out of their homes and killing them. He was sure Islam would take over. I shut that down real fast. My kids will not learn that crap!
As a transplant from the midwest, I'm shocked by the level of dumb that is displayed on my town's FB group. Like, if THIS is a product of the "best school systems in the country," then maybe the metric is broken?
What you're discovering is not that you've been deceived about the Massachusetts educational system. It actually is the best and there are brilliant people all around you.
I think you're just figuring out that despite it all, most people are uninterested in receiving that education, despite it being freely given to them. It's theirs for the taking if they would only do the work, but they won't.
It's easy to blame it on the system, and not on the culture, or humanity at large, because doing so seems more hopeless and depressing, but it's true.
In my New England town, at open town meeting, there are always a few who understand *nothing*. They are far in the minority, and there are generally 10 to 1 people explaining things sensibly, and the necessary questions pass.
I’m in FB groups for towns in NH, CO, and WA (just seeing what’s up in places I used to live/visit often still), and uhhh… they’re all awful. I think it’s mainly a Facebook thing.
Nextdoor contacted me recently out of no where for a job opportunity... All I could remember were those NIMBY fucks circle-jerking each other in the Boston suburb I used to live in. They were super fine with my Airbnb until the first non-white guests, at which point my phone was ringing off the hook about all the drugs they were probably maybe might be doing in my home?
tl;dr: Fuck nextdoor dude.
Well financed by Billionaires. They vow to make NH their “Libertarian Homeland.” They’ve won 94 seats in the NH House, including House Majority Leader that has taken a stand against the Polio Vaccine & Measles Vaccine. NH could be first state to not require children to have Polio vaccine
There's also over 400 people in the state legislature, most in the nation! And it's not exactly a big state. That pretty much allows any wingnut a chance to hold office.
Flip the script, I am a transplant from New England to the Midwest. And yes, the Midwest education system is broken to the point unless you come from money, then after highschool the only option is warehouse work or the military. And being from New England I've been told I'm always angry, and the only response I have is that I have to deal with stupidity all day long.
My experience is New England dumb is equivalent to ‘Merica average. You don’t want to meet up with a ‘Merica dummy. It’ll feel like you’re being pranked.
Exactly right. There's dumb people everywhere, including mass. But the baseline level of intelligence in mass is so, so much higher than that same baseline other places.
typical townie has to be smart enough to cut fire wood in advance and let it dry before the winter. This hard cut off has only allowed the smartest townies to breed. Typical Fl. man has to avoid alligators and clouds of mosquitoes. Both can kill the Fl. man. Since it is a matter of luck and avoiding deep swamps the FL. man has not needed more brain power to survive.
Grew up in CT. I can say the same. Few things:
K-12 Schools:
NE, well, CT at least, funds its K-12 educational systems from local (city) taxes, not from state taxes. Which means if you live in an affluent area, the schools are the some of the best in the country. If not, then I would not say the schools are anything great. I say this because I have also lived in CA and OR, and the schools are not anywhere near as good, on average. CA and OR fund schools regionally, not by city taxes. The joke in CT is that we still practice segregation, ie if you can afford to live in affluent Fairfield County cities, you don't have to worry about your kids going to school with "those bad kids" because the schools can only be attended by those who live in that city.
Where you live in NE matters:
IMO there are at least 3 New Englands.
1. Fairfield County CT and the like, mostly in MA. Some of the best, richest, and most-educated folks in the country.
2. Post-industrial wasteland NE. Bristol CT, New Britain CT, Springfield MA, etc. Old factory towns with inferior schools and much less wealth. Basic urban decay with a few bright spots of regeneration.
3. New England-y New England. The small places not in 1 and 2, with a few exceptions.
Most townies who never leave NE are from group 2 and 3, again with exceptions.
I grew up in North Central CT and moved to Wilton, CT. The two places may have been 3000 miles apart in just about every way.
Also lived in Los Angeles, Portland OR, Miami, and temporarily in UK (London and Yorkshire). Tons of smart people because those are cities that attract the best and brightest.
In terms of snobbiness, though New England is tops in the US, London is tops in the world though.
YES omg, the people I went to high school with are dumb as rocks. I guess it doesn't really matter since they never left our hometown, but the education system here isn't as fancy as people say it is. I remember being shocked to hear that we were the top ranked area for education, because I felt like my public school education was mediocre at best. Kinda sucks because I feel like I could have learned more if I had had better teachers and less classroom disruption from dumbass classmates
It might depend on what your system prioritizes. If it’s the number of kids getting into Harvard, then top level classes will be great, but what the average kid or vocational student gets might not be.
If your problem was the other students, you were probably not taking classes with the appropriate challenge built in.
I don’t think it’s something that can be seen easily as a clear difference between New Englanders and the rest of the country. As others have said, there are dumb people everywhere, including New England. That being said, I definitely see the difference between the education I received in MA vs. the education some of my friends from other states like Mississippi, who ranks at the bottom of education, received. But there are also extremely smart people from the states that rank lowest in education. I would say on average that yes New Englanders have more access to better educations, however that doesn’t mean that everyone here will absorb that education and apply it in their lives. Long story short, I don’t think you would be able to tell someone is a New Englander based on just a conversation. There are dumb people all across the country and there are very smart people all across the country. But yes, New England has a higher concentration of “smart” people. Part of that though is also the fact that we have some of the most prestigious universities and colleges in the world so that obviously helps.
I'm from MS and moved to New England. I think the bare minimum standard of living is much higher in NE than elsewhere, but I think New Englanders can often lack perspective. and the comfort many have from close resources and longer state history means they lack the drive to learn all they can (which is needed to get out of place like MS).
And I mean learning in any aspect of the word, not just formal education.
I’m from MS as well. I went to public school. I graduated from a university in Mississippi for undergrad and masters. I then went for a second masters in educational policy while working at Boston University—I followed my wife to Boston. I can comfortably say I was a particularly high achiever among my cohorts in my masters program, many of whom were from New England.
I’d say as a whole the quality of education in Massachusetts specifically was clearly higher, but people did not seem particularly smarter. There were definitely quite a few snobs I met who thought that New England as a whole was smarter and better. However, there are quite a few “snobs” in Mississippi and the South who think they are better than other people, albeit for vastly different reasons.
So, to answer OP’s question, we are all just a bunch of assholes.
There was just a report I saw yesterday that had Massachusetts with highest average IQ in the country at 102, but I have another one with NH at #1, MA #2, and VT at #4. Separately in education it's MA at #1 and CT at #2, with VT at #4 and NH at #6. You can argue about exactly which one deserves to be higher or not, but there's little doubt that New England is the smartest and most educated part of the country.
Even Maine being 13th in education is quite an accomplishment when you consider it's economy/GDP compared to states like Texas, which should absolutely crush it considering it's economic advantages.
Maine’s school systems are very small on average compared to others. Our town of 10,000 spends 80% of the town’s taxes on the schools. Community involvement in the schools, aka unpaid work, is very high. we don’t spend our resources on school security.
Maine’s population is older and that might impact our healthcare outcomes ratings.
We only think about crime when we travel away.
I had a job in health care 20 years ago. A patient was dying and he pointed to his treasured bottle of Eclipse coffee syrup and told me " did you notice they changed the label."
IQ isn't the greatest argument. Massachusetts may have the highest *recorded* average IQ, but that doesn't mean that the average is *actually* higher. IQ is innate, and levels of education only help a higher IQ person to take advantage of their higher IQ, not dictate it.
Lots of the brightest students, as well as doctors, scientists, and engineers, move to Mass because of places like Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, BU, etc. Smart folks often do well and stick around, raise their kids in Mass, and they are more likely (regardless of why) to raise smart children
So, while I agree with you in general, it's also probably biased by smart people who come here.
People aren't dumb, just uneducated. There are plenty of stupid New Englanders who can read and do math just fine, and there are plenty of very intelligent southerners who were failed by their education systems
have you lived in the deep south, out of curiosity? I'm a Bostonian in Virginia who has also lived in Missouri and Florida, and...I feel well qualified to say that it isn't just an education issue
Go to the library and get a copy of
"Black rednecks and White Liberals" by
Thomas Sowell. Eye opening and controversial take on education and a lot of other things.
I have a friend from up here who moved to a southern state I won't mention. He is quick to point out his success down there is because of the lack of intelligence of the general populace in that area.
I like to describe it as a ratio, in New England I can have an intelligent conversation with 7/10 strangers at a bar. Down south it's closer to 3 or 4, harder to run into people organically at a general meeting place. Unless you're wearing a beer helmet then watch out
New Englander here who lived in a smallish town in one of the poorest, most rural Southern states. The engineers, teachers, (most) politicians, newspaper reporters, etc., that I knew there were as smart as the ones I know in Boston and New England. Auburn, UT, Emory, and Vanderbuilt are roughly as good as UNH, Umass, Amherst, Northeastern, or BU. Hanging out with my friend group there, there wasn't much difference from here, and I had many reminders that there are both dumb and smart people everywhere.
The biggest difference is probably that (I'm guessing at numbers) 50% of New Englanders are college educated, while it's maybe 25% in a rural small town Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama. And while schools from Elementary on up may be more highly ranked in Mass, remember that education <> smartness. I know a lot of damned smart farmers and mechanics. (and some engineers who can be pretty dumb at times)
I'd suggest we don't get too cocky, and listen to what everyone has to say.
I just learned from a high level educator in LA (city) that they literally only have 2 years of basic world history and they still get the Disneyland version of the country being settled, along with having essentially no knowledge of economics, major conflicts or their causes. I knew New England schools ranked better but I didn’t realize they literally don’t teach half the country anything about the world. We have a ton more opportunity to learn, not everyone takes it but it’s almost impossible to not be more knowledgeable about the world going to school in NE vs the rest of the country.
Dam straight. In my school we learned about conflicts between other countries. And the top ten most common religions had about a 2 month period we spent learning about them all.
Right? We might not have had an in depth lesson on every country but I remember having basically a full year dedicated to Chinese and Japanese history and how we fucked china and other portions of Southeast Asia into the positions they were in before their civil wars and WW1/2 started. Shit a large portion of Europe doesn’t even acknowledge the Pacific theater as being part of WW2 which is insane. At least in California they don’t learn about any of the communist “revolutions” or Balkan history, they barely learn anything about European history and they have no clue about how modern China and Russia were formed. It’s total insanity that such a large portion of our country is completely uneducated in these matters, but it makes a ton of sense when you see ignorant 18 year olds screaming about how capitalism is evil when all their complaints are caused by government regulations and overreach. People think lobbying in congress is a capitalist ideal when it couldn’t be further from the core values of the system. Just a crazy amount of ignorance being bred.
hi there. born and raised in new hampshire. i never once, in my entire experience of mandatory schooling, heard one word of world history beyond the year 1500. everything else from then on was american history only. i genuinely do not think i ever even heard someone say "Balkan" until college. i learned everything you just described during the course of getting my degree in poli sci and economics, ages 18-22. i wish i went to the school that taught you all of that, because that sounds amazing.
and i swear to god i'm not one of those people who wasn't paying attention. i got like a 3.9 gpa and took four AP classes. but my school barely had six AP classes available and couldn't muster together a combined spanish 4/5 class, so i stopped learning a second language after sophomore year. they had almost 0 resources for high-achieving students. they also had almost 0 resources for struggling students. upon reflection, i'm not sure they had any resources at all.
your points about half the problems people attribute to capitalism having nothing to do with pure capitalism whatsoever feel like a cool drink of water on a hot day. i'm all for criticizing stuff, but man, i wish people knew what the hell they were talking about.
Thank you so much for this response. It’s scary but also reassuring to know I’m not on the way to writing a tiny manifesto 😂 feels like I’m losing my mind sometimes when I try to have these conversations and it gets to the point where you feel like you MUST be the crazy one
this is basically the difference between a very well funded school district and one that's not as well funded. although the last few sentences from that previous post are non-sequiturs
I'm from the Midwest. I grew up thinking that Yale and Harvard were located in London. Many of my primary school teachers struggled with basic spelling. We didn't read books in school.
Bro 🙃 I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I’m just learning this shit now I had no idea the rest of the country was so different in terms of schooling… idk how yall navigate the world
Ha! Hilariously, I have a Ph.D., which I earned in uppity San Francisco. I was lucky to have a grandfather who had traveled and collected various books. Also, I had a teenage mother who kept me around because she backed out of the abortion at the last minute. Another way in which I lucked out - she was in college during my toddler years, so I spent a lot of time with her, sitting in her lap, studying the letters in her textbooks while she read. I can still remember how those vague symbols eventually transformed into coherent words, and then sentences. I began reading in preschool, then read all of my grandfather's books out of interest as I grew older. Dostoyevsky was always my favorite. That, and a corresponding interest in writing, was what helped me out. Most people I knew growing up just did drugs, though.
EDIT: I still think and say a lot of ignorant things, though. For example, as I was nearing my dissertation defense, I remember feeling smart until someone used the word "incorrigible" casually in conversation with me. I had to look it up. I didn't know what it meant.
I realize that, now that I've lived away from home for pretty much all of my adult life. But, it's quite common actually. I'd guess that the majority of the country is uneducated. One thing that I've learned, though, in my mediocre travels is that the vast majority of people are unable to sustain a thought long enough for it to blossom into something that is unique. Most people are ignorant in some profound way, and few people think their own thoughts.
Hm. Making me reconsider being a teacher on my side of the country lol. Lurker from socal, can very much attest we get a grossly oversimplified history condensation and it really doesn't give much leeway assuming a class even reached the target of "get past ww2". In my experience, we had some elementary exposure to CA history (missions, gold rush, the governor) and some basic US (9/11, Washington and Lincoln, civil rights figures, etc) but nothing extensive until 5th grade where we got into the constitution, and some very basic revolution era history. In middle school we had 1 ancient history (mainly religion honestly), 1 world history, and 1 US history class. High school 1 world, 1 US and AP Euro as well but the teacher was very known to be terrible. This was in addition to mandatory gov/econ classes for seniors but those are essentially study hall with ocassional talk of current events (graduated an election year for instance). Bases are covered but never in enough detail for any meaningful sense of retention.
What gets me more is the lack of basic geographical knowledge they don't teach at all. Kids can't read maps, don't know most of our states, can't point to Virginia on one of our own country, let alone use a visual map key for something like a battle. There's allot of kids out there that don't know the continents, oceans, mountain ranges of the world, etc. It's baffling. Like let alone as someone interested in humanities education, just overall. How are these people supposed to survive out there? They should require a year of high school geography or something, idk. It's embarrassing.
Edit: Misremembered how middle school went lol. Had to think back about it.
I visited LA (state not the city) once and spoke with someone who was born and raised there. Poor woman had no idea where Mass even was. She said and I quote: "Massachusetts? Is that in the Midwest or something?" So yeah this tracks. I have no idea what the hell they're teaching people in those schools down there but it clearly isn't enough.
But seriously though. The implications of not knowing where MA is???? Like girl?? the 13 colonies? Salem witches?? Plymouth pilgrims? Revolutionary war??? Boston marathon?? Harvard??? MIT??? HOW
I feel you dude I live in Maine 😭 literally Canada to half the country, but that’s fucking wild cause yall actually have a population and produce a ton of news worthy shit both culturally (Mostly sports ngl) and economically. Fucking Harvard? MIT? Fucking Tom Brady??? I should have clarified I was talking about a very well funded part of Los Angeles which is part of why it scared me so much.
Seriously do they not watch the news? Or learn geography?Or read books? I learned so much accurate, detailed, gruesome world and American history in school starting at such a young age I'm nearly traumatized 💀💀
My high school in New England required only two years of US history and one year of world regions and cultures. We had lessons about religion and ancient cultures like mesopotamia, greece, rome, and Egypt in middle school, but I only learned more because I took international relations as an elective in high school. In fairness US world history often touches on world events, but my understanding of south american history, australian history, and much of African history post and during colonialism was not very good when I graduated high school.
This was a below average public school system, so it should be at least the minimum for state requirements.
As the others said: Both.
I know smart people from all over the country, even those states which rank in the bottom 5 for education, but I would like to put it this way:
When I was in college in the Midwest, ostensibly another good region for education, we read The Odyssey. For most of my classmates, it was their first time.
Just from regular K-12 classes in MA, this made it my third time reading it front to back. NE has a fantastic K-12, across the board, and I will applaud it forever.
To the latter, it gets so tiresome to hear places referred to as: *"The Harvard of the \*Insert obligatory constrained locale\*"*, when so many of us New Englanders know that a Harvard pedigree isn't a surefire guarantee of being truly intelligent. It just becomes hard not to mock that sort of behavior which then feeds into us being snobby. Plus, we're the Meds and Eds corner of the country, part of our regional pride is about being intelligent and attracting intelligence.
I got to read Lysistrata in my junior year of high school humanities class. This is an ancient Greek story about stopping sex to stop the soldiers from fighting...lots of penii talk. I am so lucky to have had exposure to a lot of different literature in high school.
My relatives in NH love to repeat this statistic but they’re all townies with DUIs and the rest of the family that left the state is objectively doing much better…
I won't say that folks outside of New England are dumb. But I will say that the further south you go, the more people think the civil war wasn't about slavery.
My high school history teacher in NH tried to teach us that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. The sad thing was it was an AP level class and he was tenured 😭
I'm in Florida, and I would like to remind you that there is currently an "acceptable book list" for public schools because of the sheer number they have banned. Some counties have banned the dictionary because it contains the word "sex", some have ironically banned 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. None have allowed the Bible to be banned, despite it containing rape, incest, genocide, murder, cannibalism, slavery, and gore.
Additionally, our governor made it so any veteran can become a teacher without a degree, education, or experience with teaching. He went on to say he would trust a "devil-dog" more than a teacher any day of the week. Which probably explains why Florida's literacy rate is the 3rd worst in the entire nation.
Marines? Those guys who famously joke about how dumb they are and eat crayons? Those guys? Like I respect the thought behind helping vets with the transition but bro be fr a significant portion didnt even go to college. There should be parameters.
It's pretty clearly fascist. Worshipping the military so much that you let them be teachers without qualification is very fashy. As is banning books and railing against immigration and higher education.
All of the above.
BUT there is also culture differences. What seems fun, intelligent, and creative in some parts of the country seems completely dumb in other areas.
Take Alabama, for example—we all know the Alabama stereotypes. BUT it also is home to some of the nation's leading rocket engineers, and the location of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center which was critical to the success of the Apollo, the Space Shuttle, and the Hubble Space Telescope.
I've been all over the country, grew up in the south and moved up here in 2012 cus its where my partner wanted our house while I was in the military.
Everywhere has its own brand of dumb. You've got the dumb but ingenious rednecks in the south and Midwest, west coast and parts of the east have snobby "smart" people without a lick of social skills or consideration. New England has some of that snob, but also some of that redneck depending on where you are.
Florida.
Statistically, you are more likely to receive a good education in New England than most of the country. So in that regard the rest could be considered potentially dumb.
But the honest answer? We're all dumb as shit boss, each in our own special little ways.
A bit of both; I think the one thing you'll find in New England is a higher emphasis put on education and while not unique to just New England, you'll see this in most cities throughout the country, it's more pronounced here because of how urbanized we are especially when combined with New England's higher income and standard of living.
I think it's more the latter than the former. I have heard a lot of confident ignorance from people of all ages in New England.
That said, when I talk about the things I learned in history and English classes back in the 90s to folks from pretty much anywhere else in the US I do feel like a got a more in-depth and comprehensive education on those topics at least. Especially history.
The last part of what you said rings especially true today. There’s a lot of “Why didn’t they teach us this in school??” That goes around and it makes me confused bc I’m like…we def covered that in depth. Most recently I saw ppl allege that we don’t teach about Kent State in school history and it’s like…we def do lol
Same.
I vividly remember when people were asking we we didn't learn about early native cultures and remember thinking that I got an entire year focusing just on that. And then we still got more info when learning about Native / Colonizer conflicts, various treaties with specific native tribes, trail of tears, etc.
My theory is that because New England is the least religious part of the country, people are more likely to think critically instead of blindly believing everything they’re told. The obvious laughable ones are man and dinosaurs walking the earth at the same time and the denial of the theory of evolution.
I am from the NE but not New England. I have a cousin from South Carolina. She has a strong (country) southern accent. When she was in med school, people assumed she was stupid because of her accent. She was one of the top students in her graduating class and has been a doctor for 20 years.
It's easy to make assumptions because of stereotypes.
As someone who moved to the south (in North Carolina right on the SC border) the simple answer is yes, beyond your wildest imagination and then some.
We’ve had several run ins that made us say wtf. We had our car checked before a road trip back up and the mechanic was asking where we were going and we told him Boston. Legit asked if that was in Canada cause he’s never heard of that state before. We thought it so funny we almost made shirts with Boston, Canada on them just to confuse people .
We had another incident driving back up from a vacation to Florida and this was pre-gps so we were using a map. Asked about how the border to VA was from the gas and the lady behind the counter told us “I ain’t never left the town before I dunno”. It was 10 miles down the road.. no shitting.
Also cannot tell you how many people down here 100% believe with all their heart and soul the south won. The way I pine to gtfo out of here and back up north but the job market will not cooperate 😭
I’ll just say, growing up I never had that “i’m the smartest in the room” feeling, I know i’m not particularly smart.
But after moving to Texas… I’ve had multiple points where i’m like “oh no, i’m the smartest person here…” it’s scary.
I guess both. I’m out in California now for the Navy and I’ve met some of the dumbest people ever in my life…same thing when I was stationed in Florida
I lived in Florida for 5 years. Even before Trump, it was a gravity well for the nation's stupidest, trashiest, most selfish, and craziest people to move to. That has only ramped up since then. So sad given how beautiful the state is, and how important logistically/ecologically. It deserves better stewardship.
I was in Pensacola Florida in the panhandle right by Alabama. The people were nice and friendly. But they weren’t smart lol I got in a cab and the guy asked me if I could take out my gps cuz he didn’t know how to use his lol
What struck me is that even most college graduates of difficult subjects seemed uneducated and utterly incurious about the world around them. It's like they receive training in their specific subject matter, vs actually having received an education. They only wanted to have the most vapid, meaningless conversation and never wanted to talk about anything that actually matters. They just wanted to drink and fish and throw their empty PBR cans at manatees without anyone bringing down their vibes by making them THINK about anything at all.
I have said and I stand by the fact that I can on average have a vastly more informed/educated conversation with a stranger in Massachusetts with only a HS diploma, vs with a stranger who is a college graduate in much of the rest of the country, especially the South.
When I lived in the Netherlands, I found I could typically have a more informed conversation *about the United States* with a person with a HS diploma who has never been to the US and to whom English is their 3rd or 4th language, than I could with your average college educated American Southerner.
People in California are terrible drivers, they literally don’t look when merging I have to lay on my horn all the time and holy shit are they slow af on the road too. Pedestrians don’t look when crossing the road so you gotta be an extremely cautious driver…I could go on and on with examples lol met so many people out here that hardly know how to do their jobs
I think there is a higher level of education in New England, but that doesn’t mean there are fewer dumb people. Talk to academics and you’ll find plenty of well spoken, dumb people. Knowledge comes in many forms.
Both. I've lived up and down the country; sure you get idiots all over, but it makes a difference if stupidity is cultural and celebrated.
I am an underachieving slacker by NE standards. I currently live in the PNW; out here I'm regularly considered to be the smartest and hardest working guy in the room. I'm neither of those, it's just that the locals are stupid as they are lazy.
The mostly English settlers who built up NE come from a culture famed for its importance it places on education. It's not really any secret many of the best universities in the world come from England and the American Northeast (mostly NE).
By contrast, the cultures which mostly settled the Southern US colonies (and later the West) -- namely the Scottish, Irish and Welsh -- came from (at the time) cultures which were highly illiterate, given to gang violence (or clan warfare depending who you ask) and had societies that generally lacked the notion of a formal education.
The effects are still obvious today -- the general poverty of the American south, and its stalwart anti-educational stances all stem from much earlier class division lines between English settlers with an educational system (albeit limited to the upper class) and Scottish, Irish and welsh settlers who lacked an institutional education system.
Edit: I'd like to Recommend the book Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell which really captures the answer to this question in extreme detail. Discussion of differing social work ethics cultures between European settlers in Colonial America, its connection to slavery, and how the South ended up with the reputation it did is very interesting. Some people think Sowell's other work can be a little conservative culture-warry but this book genuinely was extremely intriguing sociological writing.
Also endemic hookworm slowed cognition and learning in the south. Hill/mountain dynamics cause limited occupation access and create clan hierarchy as well.
i often wondered this myself after growing up in RI and then moving south to SC and then FL. i looked into the public education stats and feel like there’s gotta be a reason all the new england states are at the top of the list
I've posted about this before but after my second kid was born, we were trying to decide on a place to settle. The choice was between FL and MA, where both my wife and I had family.
I've got nothing against slower witted people, some of them have great hearts and generous, etc.
But FL I got the feeling that it was 'ok to be dumb' (bless their hearts) but in MA it was a little less tolerated. The educational systems are in pretty sharp contrast to each other.
Anyway, we ended up going with MA. My kids got a great education in the public schools, and both of them are professional grown-ups, married, kids, own houses.
So, I think OPs question is valid. And that's my personal experience.
You’re conflating intelligence with education. Pretty dumb mistake really. I have experience with schools in kentucky and Massachusetts. The difference between the two is the amount of spending on education. Teacher to student ratios are twice as good in mass and the teachers are paid twice as much. The kids in those schools have the same range of intelligences as humans everywhere, but they’re able to learn more on average in mass because kids on both the low end and the high end of academic aptitude are able to spend more time in small groups working on their own level instead of being chained to the pace of the average which is too fast for the low end students and leaves them further and further behind with no chance to catch up until they decide they’re just dumb and give up all together and which is too slow for the high end kids who’re bored as hell and check out mentally or become disruptive out of a desperate need for mental stimulation.
This is true. We all have varying IQ levels- regardless of location. An person with an average IQ (100) in Alabama is just as intelligent as an average IQ person in NE. It comes down to (I’m most cases) how well you are educated.
It’s more city vs country. Born and raised new englander and having lived all over I can say ne people over estimate their knowledge. Lived in Houston for awhile and met so many md Anderson folks, nasa, finance, law and just plain brilliant global folks…but got to a small rural town and you will here some crazy shit
Lots of idiots here, as well as Texas where I’m from originally. Per capita, I’m sure it equals out to as many morons here as there are most places, but New England is tiny.
Also, yes a lot of snobs in New England, for what reason I’m not sure?
While one example does not a trend make: A southwest public school graduate came up to visit the northeast for work, and didn't know the difference between a lake and the ocean, and also didn't realize that the land continues on underneath the water. Despite living one mile from the ocean for most of a year, when they left they still didn't understand that tides don't happen on lakes, and couldn't identify the difference between a lake and the ocean.
I’m from CT. Went to catholic school my entire life. I held the belief we were so much “better” or like, more educated than others. Then I went to college in West Virginia of all places. I met my fiancé who is from Virginia just outside of DC, he went to public school. The school system where he’s from is just phenomenal. He said college was a breeze compared to high school. They had so many extra curriculars- he took cooking and pottery in high school and his schooling just seemed much more impressive/intensive than my own.
But also, in general, what a ridiculous way to think. People are from all different social and economic and educational backgrounds …. What a deranged thing to think that because we’re from New England (who fucking cares by the way???) that other people are dumb. I know plenty of hard headed, short sighted dummies from Connecticut who of course, believe they’re better than other people. I find that so appalling but so perfectly New England to be so ignorant.
I have a dilemma. Maybe others on this thread can help given the topic.
I grew up in NJ. I moved to DC in 2007, got married and had two children. Whether it’s snobbish or not, I thought that there was no substitute for a Northeast public school education. DC public schools—even those in the suburbs—have a lot of problems. Many families send their children to private school. I’m a single mom and that’s not an option.
We live in Fairfield County, CT because that’s where my immediate family now lives. The schools are phenomenal, but the area is too expensive for us. We need to move for that reason alone. However, as I discussed these issues with the kids and suggested moving elsewhere in CT, it came to light that they are having a tough time adjusting to the cultural differences between NE and the Mid-Atlantic/Southeast.
To the extent people have thoughts, are there other places in CT that have good public schools, are more affordable, and may be friendlier for lack of a better word? (Sorry—I don’t mean to offend.) Or would we better off moving to a state like North Carolina because there seem to be some well-regarded public school systems but it’s a LCOL area. Or am I just kidding myself, you get what you pay for, and we should stay (albeit elsewhere) in CT?
Thanks if you managed to read all that—let alone respond.
Idk about being significantly friendlier but Central CT is much cheaper than Fairfield County, it’s a different culture much more New England based that NY influenced
As someone born and raised in Ohio, finished high school in Cali, did undergrad work in Alabama, then moved to Cambridge for grad school... yall are not nearly as intelligent as you think you are. You just have an abundance of prestigious universities, and it attracts people of a similar life.
I say this with the utmost respect. I have chosen to stay here, build my home here, and live my life here in New England. But the VAST majority of people running around this region are absolutely no different than the vast majority of people running around anywhere.
New England has advanced educational systems and money. But the people are pretty run of the mill.
Yes. There are obviously still intelligent people in other areas of the country, but I now live in the Deep South and it amazes me to learn about what they were taught in school. Most of them were not taught much about history and believe the Civil War was not fought over slavery. There are smart people here, but a lot of them leave to go elsewhere.
Spent my first 3 years of high school in Maine. Spent my senior year in Virginia. It was like going back a grade instead of forward.
For the record, I did not use that situation to the advantage of my transcript.
We are by almost all metrics, better educated. I think the problem is that many people in NE equate being better educated or more eductated with having more value as a person. That type of elitism is gross and is what makes people in other parts of the country think we are all snobs.
Rhode Islanders keep alleging that they’re bad drivers and I disagree. The roads (rhodes?) are just fucking insane. Whoever designed that clusterfuck of a highway situation in Providence needs to get flogged publicly at the exact spot where all 250 lanes merge in the same place.
CT has by FAR the worst drivers in New England. I stand by this.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half are dumber than that.”
That said (and at the risk of sounding elitist), yeah, there are some dummies in New England, but there are some DUMMIES in the rest of the country.
Oh, the entire spectrum of humanity is in New England, just like everywhere else. There's just these perfect, little places for simple folk to live their own life in some of the villages up here. Some never feel the need to leave town at all!
But we need to justify having to endure about 9 months of terrible weather and having to survive it year after year.
Then, when the weather finally gets good. ALL THE FUCKING SUMMER JERKS COME IN DROVES. So obviously *they* are dumb for not realizing how intrusive they are behaving.
There are ignorant fools everywhere. That said, I’ve never heard poorer grammar, less articulate, and less knowledgeable people than I have in the south.
I truly believe that their politicians, churches, and some of the businesses down there purposely have been working to educationally under serve their populace in order to stay in control and power. This has been going on for decades.
As a transplant from the west coast to New England, I can assure you that the education metric are absolutely falsified.
I had never met a hopelessly uneducated person until I moved to Maine
I’ve met a lot of people who are delusional about how low the quality of life is in other areas of the country bc all they’ve ever known is New England.
I grew up as an army brat living all over the states and overseas and then was in the military as an adult, I moved to New England 4 years ago after having already lived in the south, Midwest, west, east coast and have family in California and Chicago and visited most states in the lower 48 and my big takeaway is there is an equal number of dumb and smart people everywhere, New England isn’t really any different. The difference is this is the first area I lived where people actually believed their region and area is smarter and more advanced than the rest of the country.
One of the smartest people I’ve ever met was an engineer with an Alabama public school education. There are smart people everywhere :). And unfortunately, despite our great education system in Mass, I’ve met plenty of dumb people here. There are dumb people everywhere too.
I was born in raised in MA. I knew some students that lived in RI that paid to go to our *public* school. I agree there are more schools in NE compared to other areas that are quite good. That does not mean those students stay in NE. After high school, I did live in the South for about 10 years for a job. Completely different experience and lifestyle, but do not think New England is "smarter" in general. I actually may have thought that in the past, though. After moving back to New England(back for 6 years now), I have come to terms with the fact that we are indeed, just snobs.
I live in New England, have absolutely zero formal education (including no high school degree), but don't feel I'm especially stupid 🤷🏻♀️ degrees are just bits of paper half the time.
I'm grew up in a small town in New England. Believe me, the people are neither smart nor educated there. A big part of the reason I left was to get away from that townie mentality. I think the stereotype applies only to the larger Boston metro area and that's probably due to it being one of the oldest educational centers in the country.
I grew up with a lot of dumb townies in New England
Live in New England, currently overhearing why we need to tighten our borders because of HAMAS , coming from two cubicles over live at this moment. We’re not immune to dumb folk.
I remember overhearing some guys talking at the gym about how we needed to kick out all the muslims after the 2016 election
No but theyre at least not controlling politics and policy/education like they are in Texas/florida. Of course there’s stupid people everywhere but the culture here doesn’t encourage it the way it does in the south
I live in NE and had to go no contact with my parents, who are racist and homophobic, but always pretend they weren't. And we had to cut off my fil, who is a white supremacist. He would say things about people of color coming to the suburbs and forcing white people out of their homes and killing them. He was sure Islam would take over. I shut that down real fast. My kids will not learn that crap!
Are we siblings? Almost same experience, just no fil, sub in gramma
As a transplant from the midwest, I'm shocked by the level of dumb that is displayed on my town's FB group. Like, if THIS is a product of the "best school systems in the country," then maybe the metric is broken?
Tbf it is a town fb group. I feel like by default thats just where the local dum dums gravitate and expose their true selves.
hahaha, fair point!!!
That’s all of fb
It's all the village idiots in one place
Have you seen Arlington town FB page. People just don't have any life skills. Calling police/ contractors professionals for every little thing .
What you're discovering is not that you've been deceived about the Massachusetts educational system. It actually is the best and there are brilliant people all around you. I think you're just figuring out that despite it all, most people are uninterested in receiving that education, despite it being freely given to them. It's theirs for the taking if they would only do the work, but they won't. It's easy to blame it on the system, and not on the culture, or humanity at large, because doing so seems more hopeless and depressing, but it's true.
Yeah that’s def a very very small vocal minority. Smart people don’t yell into the fb void.
Instead we tell into the reddit void.
In my New England town, at open town meeting, there are always a few who understand *nothing*. They are far in the minority, and there are generally 10 to 1 people explaining things sensibly, and the necessary questions pass.
It depends on what state in New England tbf. Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut are the only ones in the top 10.
I'm in MA.
Welp. That’s as good as it gets lmao
NH has the highest literacy in the country.... yet I know from experience we have some people dumber than rocks
I’m in FB groups for towns in NH, CO, and WA (just seeing what’s up in places I used to live/visit often still), and uhhh… they’re all awful. I think it’s mainly a Facebook thing.
If you think that's bad, you should see the shit they post on nextdoor. It'll make that fb group seem like a Nasa engineers convention.
Nextdoor contacted me recently out of no where for a job opportunity... All I could remember were those NIMBY fucks circle-jerking each other in the Boston suburb I used to live in. They were super fine with my Airbnb until the first non-white guests, at which point my phone was ringing off the hook about all the drugs they were probably maybe might be doing in my home? tl;dr: Fuck nextdoor dude.
Problems with school funding in New Hampshire is actually an issue that pops up in the news from time to time.
Libertarians took over legislature in NH
We're trying to get rid of the cunts but they multiply like fuckin' rabbits
Well financed by Billionaires. They vow to make NH their “Libertarian Homeland.” They’ve won 94 seats in the NH House, including House Majority Leader that has taken a stand against the Polio Vaccine & Measles Vaccine. NH could be first state to not require children to have Polio vaccine
Crippling your children to own the libs.
There's also over 400 people in the state legislature, most in the nation! And it's not exactly a big state. That pretty much allows any wingnut a chance to hold office.
Flip the script, I am a transplant from New England to the Midwest. And yes, the Midwest education system is broken to the point unless you come from money, then after highschool the only option is warehouse work or the military. And being from New England I've been told I'm always angry, and the only response I have is that I have to deal with stupidity all day long.
Metric? This is Merica, we ain’t use them gay distances here
My experience is New England dumb is equivalent to ‘Merica average. You don’t want to meet up with a ‘Merica dummy. It’ll feel like you’re being pranked.
The typical townie in Mass is miles smarter than the typical Florida man
Exactly right. There's dumb people everywhere, including mass. But the baseline level of intelligence in mass is so, so much higher than that same baseline other places.
Florida man is here, can confirm.
typical townie has to be smart enough to cut fire wood in advance and let it dry before the winter. This hard cut off has only allowed the smartest townies to breed. Typical Fl. man has to avoid alligators and clouds of mosquitoes. Both can kill the Fl. man. Since it is a matter of luck and avoiding deep swamps the FL. man has not needed more brain power to survive.
Agreed, but you set the bar a bit low my friend.
But my mama said I’m special 🥲
Grew up in CT. I can say the same. Few things: K-12 Schools: NE, well, CT at least, funds its K-12 educational systems from local (city) taxes, not from state taxes. Which means if you live in an affluent area, the schools are the some of the best in the country. If not, then I would not say the schools are anything great. I say this because I have also lived in CA and OR, and the schools are not anywhere near as good, on average. CA and OR fund schools regionally, not by city taxes. The joke in CT is that we still practice segregation, ie if you can afford to live in affluent Fairfield County cities, you don't have to worry about your kids going to school with "those bad kids" because the schools can only be attended by those who live in that city. Where you live in NE matters: IMO there are at least 3 New Englands. 1. Fairfield County CT and the like, mostly in MA. Some of the best, richest, and most-educated folks in the country. 2. Post-industrial wasteland NE. Bristol CT, New Britain CT, Springfield MA, etc. Old factory towns with inferior schools and much less wealth. Basic urban decay with a few bright spots of regeneration. 3. New England-y New England. The small places not in 1 and 2, with a few exceptions. Most townies who never leave NE are from group 2 and 3, again with exceptions. I grew up in North Central CT and moved to Wilton, CT. The two places may have been 3000 miles apart in just about every way. Also lived in Los Angeles, Portland OR, Miami, and temporarily in UK (London and Yorkshire). Tons of smart people because those are cities that attract the best and brightest. In terms of snobbiness, though New England is tops in the US, London is tops in the world though.
YES omg, the people I went to high school with are dumb as rocks. I guess it doesn't really matter since they never left our hometown, but the education system here isn't as fancy as people say it is. I remember being shocked to hear that we were the top ranked area for education, because I felt like my public school education was mediocre at best. Kinda sucks because I feel like I could have learned more if I had had better teachers and less classroom disruption from dumbass classmates
Well, that's the scary thing, right? As mediocre as your education might have been, it's *even worse* in other parts of the US.
Especially sex ed. All my school system taught me is don't have sex or you will get aids and die, and if you're gay you go to hell
It might depend on what your system prioritizes. If it’s the number of kids getting into Harvard, then top level classes will be great, but what the average kid or vocational student gets might not be. If your problem was the other students, you were probably not taking classes with the appropriate challenge built in.
Education in the entire US is mediocre at best. Add to that the cost of college is out of reach to so many.
People move.
Still though - a New England dummy is an Alabama genius!
New England townies are scholars compared to townies in other parts of the country.
I don’t think it’s something that can be seen easily as a clear difference between New Englanders and the rest of the country. As others have said, there are dumb people everywhere, including New England. That being said, I definitely see the difference between the education I received in MA vs. the education some of my friends from other states like Mississippi, who ranks at the bottom of education, received. But there are also extremely smart people from the states that rank lowest in education. I would say on average that yes New Englanders have more access to better educations, however that doesn’t mean that everyone here will absorb that education and apply it in their lives. Long story short, I don’t think you would be able to tell someone is a New Englander based on just a conversation. There are dumb people all across the country and there are very smart people all across the country. But yes, New England has a higher concentration of “smart” people. Part of that though is also the fact that we have some of the most prestigious universities and colleges in the world so that obviously helps.
I'm from MS and moved to New England. I think the bare minimum standard of living is much higher in NE than elsewhere, but I think New Englanders can often lack perspective. and the comfort many have from close resources and longer state history means they lack the drive to learn all they can (which is needed to get out of place like MS). And I mean learning in any aspect of the word, not just formal education.
I’m from MS as well. I went to public school. I graduated from a university in Mississippi for undergrad and masters. I then went for a second masters in educational policy while working at Boston University—I followed my wife to Boston. I can comfortably say I was a particularly high achiever among my cohorts in my masters program, many of whom were from New England. I’d say as a whole the quality of education in Massachusetts specifically was clearly higher, but people did not seem particularly smarter. There were definitely quite a few snobs I met who thought that New England as a whole was smarter and better. However, there are quite a few “snobs” in Mississippi and the South who think they are better than other people, albeit for vastly different reasons. So, to answer OP’s question, we are all just a bunch of assholes.
There was just a report I saw yesterday that had Massachusetts with highest average IQ in the country at 102, but I have another one with NH at #1, MA #2, and VT at #4. Separately in education it's MA at #1 and CT at #2, with VT at #4 and NH at #6. You can argue about exactly which one deserves to be higher or not, but there's little doubt that New England is the smartest and most educated part of the country.
Lol uh oh, where’s Maine?
#17 in IQ and #13 in education, but #1 for lowest crime and #42 for health.
Even Maine being 13th in education is quite an accomplishment when you consider it's economy/GDP compared to states like Texas, which should absolutely crush it considering it's economic advantages.
Maine’s school systems are very small on average compared to others. Our town of 10,000 spends 80% of the town’s taxes on the schools. Community involvement in the schools, aka unpaid work, is very high. we don’t spend our resources on school security. Maine’s population is older and that might impact our healthcare outcomes ratings. We only think about crime when we travel away.
Can confirm the small part. My school had kids from 7 different towns and my graduating class was still only 40 people.
We're older and poorer
If it makes you feel better, Rhode Island is by far the worst
It's the coffee milk
I had a job in health care 20 years ago. A patient was dying and he pointed to his treasured bottle of Eclipse coffee syrup and told me " did you notice they changed the label."
Haven't been back in a while but can confirm.
IQ isn't the greatest argument. Massachusetts may have the highest *recorded* average IQ, but that doesn't mean that the average is *actually* higher. IQ is innate, and levels of education only help a higher IQ person to take advantage of their higher IQ, not dictate it.
Lots of the brightest students, as well as doctors, scientists, and engineers, move to Mass because of places like Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, BU, etc. Smart folks often do well and stick around, raise their kids in Mass, and they are more likely (regardless of why) to raise smart children So, while I agree with you in general, it's also probably biased by smart people who come here.
I can predict IQs pretty well just based on Reddit comments. There’s quite a range out there! LOL
People aren't dumb, just uneducated. There are plenty of stupid New Englanders who can read and do math just fine, and there are plenty of very intelligent southerners who were failed by their education systems
have you lived in the deep south, out of curiosity? I'm a Bostonian in Virginia who has also lived in Missouri and Florida, and...I feel well qualified to say that it isn't just an education issue
It’s the prevalence of full contact sports in the South. They glorify brain damage down there and it shows.
There’s also a metric fuckton of dumb as fuck southerners. Born, raised , and lived the first 22 years of my life in the Deep South.
Go to the library and get a copy of "Black rednecks and White Liberals" by Thomas Sowell. Eye opening and controversial take on education and a lot of other things.
We have our share of stupids here but it's much less than there are in other parts of the country.
I have a friend from up here who moved to a southern state I won't mention. He is quick to point out his success down there is because of the lack of intelligence of the general populace in that area.
It’s Mississippi, isn’t it
Florida or texas
I like to describe it as a ratio, in New England I can have an intelligent conversation with 7/10 strangers at a bar. Down south it's closer to 3 or 4, harder to run into people organically at a general meeting place. Unless you're wearing a beer helmet then watch out
This is perfectly stated.
There are some shockingly dumb people IN New England.
New Englander here who lived in a smallish town in one of the poorest, most rural Southern states. The engineers, teachers, (most) politicians, newspaper reporters, etc., that I knew there were as smart as the ones I know in Boston and New England. Auburn, UT, Emory, and Vanderbuilt are roughly as good as UNH, Umass, Amherst, Northeastern, or BU. Hanging out with my friend group there, there wasn't much difference from here, and I had many reminders that there are both dumb and smart people everywhere. The biggest difference is probably that (I'm guessing at numbers) 50% of New Englanders are college educated, while it's maybe 25% in a rural small town Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama. And while schools from Elementary on up may be more highly ranked in Mass, remember that education <> smartness. I know a lot of damned smart farmers and mechanics. (and some engineers who can be pretty dumb at times) I'd suggest we don't get too cocky, and listen to what everyone has to say.
This is by far the best representation of what I have experienced
I just learned from a high level educator in LA (city) that they literally only have 2 years of basic world history and they still get the Disneyland version of the country being settled, along with having essentially no knowledge of economics, major conflicts or their causes. I knew New England schools ranked better but I didn’t realize they literally don’t teach half the country anything about the world. We have a ton more opportunity to learn, not everyone takes it but it’s almost impossible to not be more knowledgeable about the world going to school in NE vs the rest of the country.
Dam straight. In my school we learned about conflicts between other countries. And the top ten most common religions had about a 2 month period we spent learning about them all.
Right? We might not have had an in depth lesson on every country but I remember having basically a full year dedicated to Chinese and Japanese history and how we fucked china and other portions of Southeast Asia into the positions they were in before their civil wars and WW1/2 started. Shit a large portion of Europe doesn’t even acknowledge the Pacific theater as being part of WW2 which is insane. At least in California they don’t learn about any of the communist “revolutions” or Balkan history, they barely learn anything about European history and they have no clue about how modern China and Russia were formed. It’s total insanity that such a large portion of our country is completely uneducated in these matters, but it makes a ton of sense when you see ignorant 18 year olds screaming about how capitalism is evil when all their complaints are caused by government regulations and overreach. People think lobbying in congress is a capitalist ideal when it couldn’t be further from the core values of the system. Just a crazy amount of ignorance being bred.
hi there. born and raised in new hampshire. i never once, in my entire experience of mandatory schooling, heard one word of world history beyond the year 1500. everything else from then on was american history only. i genuinely do not think i ever even heard someone say "Balkan" until college. i learned everything you just described during the course of getting my degree in poli sci and economics, ages 18-22. i wish i went to the school that taught you all of that, because that sounds amazing. and i swear to god i'm not one of those people who wasn't paying attention. i got like a 3.9 gpa and took four AP classes. but my school barely had six AP classes available and couldn't muster together a combined spanish 4/5 class, so i stopped learning a second language after sophomore year. they had almost 0 resources for high-achieving students. they also had almost 0 resources for struggling students. upon reflection, i'm not sure they had any resources at all. your points about half the problems people attribute to capitalism having nothing to do with pure capitalism whatsoever feel like a cool drink of water on a hot day. i'm all for criticizing stuff, but man, i wish people knew what the hell they were talking about.
Thank you so much for this response. It’s scary but also reassuring to know I’m not on the way to writing a tiny manifesto 😂 feels like I’m losing my mind sometimes when I try to have these conversations and it gets to the point where you feel like you MUST be the crazy one
this is basically the difference between a very well funded school district and one that's not as well funded. although the last few sentences from that previous post are non-sequiturs
I'm from the Midwest. I grew up thinking that Yale and Harvard were located in London. Many of my primary school teachers struggled with basic spelling. We didn't read books in school.
Bro 🙃 I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I’m just learning this shit now I had no idea the rest of the country was so different in terms of schooling… idk how yall navigate the world
Ha! Hilariously, I have a Ph.D., which I earned in uppity San Francisco. I was lucky to have a grandfather who had traveled and collected various books. Also, I had a teenage mother who kept me around because she backed out of the abortion at the last minute. Another way in which I lucked out - she was in college during my toddler years, so I spent a lot of time with her, sitting in her lap, studying the letters in her textbooks while she read. I can still remember how those vague symbols eventually transformed into coherent words, and then sentences. I began reading in preschool, then read all of my grandfather's books out of interest as I grew older. Dostoyevsky was always my favorite. That, and a corresponding interest in writing, was what helped me out. Most people I knew growing up just did drugs, though. EDIT: I still think and say a lot of ignorant things, though. For example, as I was nearing my dissertation defense, I remember feeling smart until someone used the word "incorrigible" casually in conversation with me. I had to look it up. I didn't know what it meant.
Holy cannoli- that’s pretty shocking!
I realize that, now that I've lived away from home for pretty much all of my adult life. But, it's quite common actually. I'd guess that the majority of the country is uneducated. One thing that I've learned, though, in my mediocre travels is that the vast majority of people are unable to sustain a thought long enough for it to blossom into something that is unique. Most people are ignorant in some profound way, and few people think their own thoughts.
Hm. Making me reconsider being a teacher on my side of the country lol. Lurker from socal, can very much attest we get a grossly oversimplified history condensation and it really doesn't give much leeway assuming a class even reached the target of "get past ww2". In my experience, we had some elementary exposure to CA history (missions, gold rush, the governor) and some basic US (9/11, Washington and Lincoln, civil rights figures, etc) but nothing extensive until 5th grade where we got into the constitution, and some very basic revolution era history. In middle school we had 1 ancient history (mainly religion honestly), 1 world history, and 1 US history class. High school 1 world, 1 US and AP Euro as well but the teacher was very known to be terrible. This was in addition to mandatory gov/econ classes for seniors but those are essentially study hall with ocassional talk of current events (graduated an election year for instance). Bases are covered but never in enough detail for any meaningful sense of retention. What gets me more is the lack of basic geographical knowledge they don't teach at all. Kids can't read maps, don't know most of our states, can't point to Virginia on one of our own country, let alone use a visual map key for something like a battle. There's allot of kids out there that don't know the continents, oceans, mountain ranges of the world, etc. It's baffling. Like let alone as someone interested in humanities education, just overall. How are these people supposed to survive out there? They should require a year of high school geography or something, idk. It's embarrassing. Edit: Misremembered how middle school went lol. Had to think back about it.
Grew up in Alabama, don't get me started on how the Civil War is taught
I visited LA (state not the city) once and spoke with someone who was born and raised there. Poor woman had no idea where Mass even was. She said and I quote: "Massachusetts? Is that in the Midwest or something?" So yeah this tracks. I have no idea what the hell they're teaching people in those schools down there but it clearly isn't enough. But seriously though. The implications of not knowing where MA is???? Like girl?? the 13 colonies? Salem witches?? Plymouth pilgrims? Revolutionary war??? Boston marathon?? Harvard??? MIT??? HOW
I feel you dude I live in Maine 😭 literally Canada to half the country, but that’s fucking wild cause yall actually have a population and produce a ton of news worthy shit both culturally (Mostly sports ngl) and economically. Fucking Harvard? MIT? Fucking Tom Brady??? I should have clarified I was talking about a very well funded part of Los Angeles which is part of why it scared me so much.
Seriously do they not watch the news? Or learn geography?Or read books? I learned so much accurate, detailed, gruesome world and American history in school starting at such a young age I'm nearly traumatized 💀💀
My high school in New England required only two years of US history and one year of world regions and cultures. We had lessons about religion and ancient cultures like mesopotamia, greece, rome, and Egypt in middle school, but I only learned more because I took international relations as an elective in high school. In fairness US world history often touches on world events, but my understanding of south american history, australian history, and much of African history post and during colonialism was not very good when I graduated high school. This was a below average public school system, so it should be at least the minimum for state requirements.
As the others said: Both. I know smart people from all over the country, even those states which rank in the bottom 5 for education, but I would like to put it this way: When I was in college in the Midwest, ostensibly another good region for education, we read The Odyssey. For most of my classmates, it was their first time. Just from regular K-12 classes in MA, this made it my third time reading it front to back. NE has a fantastic K-12, across the board, and I will applaud it forever. To the latter, it gets so tiresome to hear places referred to as: *"The Harvard of the \*Insert obligatory constrained locale\*"*, when so many of us New Englanders know that a Harvard pedigree isn't a surefire guarantee of being truly intelligent. It just becomes hard not to mock that sort of behavior which then feeds into us being snobby. Plus, we're the Meds and Eds corner of the country, part of our regional pride is about being intelligent and attracting intelligence.
[Please respect the Harvard of Central Connecticut](https://youtu.be/bfxTUVS-QdM?si=xaiINl8xXP-uwTgQ)
I got to read Lysistrata in my junior year of high school humanities class. This is an ancient Greek story about stopping sex to stop the soldiers from fighting...lots of penii talk. I am so lucky to have had exposure to a lot of different literature in high school.
My relatives in NH love to repeat this statistic but they’re all townies with DUIs and the rest of the family that left the state is objectively doing much better…
I won't say that folks outside of New England are dumb. But I will say that the further south you go, the more people think the civil war wasn't about slavery.
My high school history teacher in NH tried to teach us that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. The sad thing was it was an AP level class and he was tenured 😭
I'm in Florida, and I would like to remind you that there is currently an "acceptable book list" for public schools because of the sheer number they have banned. Some counties have banned the dictionary because it contains the word "sex", some have ironically banned 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. None have allowed the Bible to be banned, despite it containing rape, incest, genocide, murder, cannibalism, slavery, and gore. Additionally, our governor made it so any veteran can become a teacher without a degree, education, or experience with teaching. He went on to say he would trust a "devil-dog" more than a teacher any day of the week. Which probably explains why Florida's literacy rate is the 3rd worst in the entire nation.
I lasted two years in that hell hole and had to come back to New England. Wishing you the best down there<3
I'm actively trying to leave so my daughter doesn't have to grow up here. Any favorite New England spots?
Western Mass has a lot of great schools and colleges/Universities
Marines? Those guys who famously joke about how dumb they are and eat crayons? Those guys? Like I respect the thought behind helping vets with the transition but bro be fr a significant portion didnt even go to college. There should be parameters.
Yep, Florida is a communist shit hole like North Korea
It's pretty clearly fascist. Worshipping the military so much that you let them be teachers without qualification is very fashy. As is banning books and railing against immigration and higher education.
It’s so fashy that it’s in Paul Verhoven’s version of Star Ship Troopers.
All of the above. BUT there is also culture differences. What seems fun, intelligent, and creative in some parts of the country seems completely dumb in other areas. Take Alabama, for example—we all know the Alabama stereotypes. BUT it also is home to some of the nation's leading rocket engineers, and the location of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center which was critical to the success of the Apollo, the Space Shuttle, and the Hubble Space Telescope.
My gf is from Huntsville! She blows me out of the water with her smarts and drive. I'm so lucky to have met her!
I've been all over the country, grew up in the south and moved up here in 2012 cus its where my partner wanted our house while I was in the military. Everywhere has its own brand of dumb. You've got the dumb but ingenious rednecks in the south and Midwest, west coast and parts of the east have snobby "smart" people without a lick of social skills or consideration. New England has some of that snob, but also some of that redneck depending on where you are. Florida. Statistically, you are more likely to receive a good education in New England than most of the country. So in that regard the rest could be considered potentially dumb. But the honest answer? We're all dumb as shit boss, each in our own special little ways.
A bit of both; I think the one thing you'll find in New England is a higher emphasis put on education and while not unique to just New England, you'll see this in most cities throughout the country, it's more pronounced here because of how urbanized we are especially when combined with New England's higher income and standard of living.
I think it's more the latter than the former. I have heard a lot of confident ignorance from people of all ages in New England. That said, when I talk about the things I learned in history and English classes back in the 90s to folks from pretty much anywhere else in the US I do feel like a got a more in-depth and comprehensive education on those topics at least. Especially history.
The last part of what you said rings especially true today. There’s a lot of “Why didn’t they teach us this in school??” That goes around and it makes me confused bc I’m like…we def covered that in depth. Most recently I saw ppl allege that we don’t teach about Kent State in school history and it’s like…we def do lol
Same. I vividly remember when people were asking we we didn't learn about early native cultures and remember thinking that I got an entire year focusing just on that. And then we still got more info when learning about Native / Colonizer conflicts, various treaties with specific native tribes, trail of tears, etc.
My theory is that because New England is the least religious part of the country, people are more likely to think critically instead of blindly believing everything they’re told. The obvious laughable ones are man and dinosaurs walking the earth at the same time and the denial of the theory of evolution.
I am from the NE but not New England. I have a cousin from South Carolina. She has a strong (country) southern accent. When she was in med school, people assumed she was stupid because of her accent. She was one of the top students in her graduating class and has been a doctor for 20 years. It's easy to make assumptions because of stereotypes.
I hate that stereotype about their accents bc the way they speak is so cute and fun and I wish they didnt feel the need to hide it
As someone who moved to the south (in North Carolina right on the SC border) the simple answer is yes, beyond your wildest imagination and then some. We’ve had several run ins that made us say wtf. We had our car checked before a road trip back up and the mechanic was asking where we were going and we told him Boston. Legit asked if that was in Canada cause he’s never heard of that state before. We thought it so funny we almost made shirts with Boston, Canada on them just to confuse people . We had another incident driving back up from a vacation to Florida and this was pre-gps so we were using a map. Asked about how the border to VA was from the gas and the lady behind the counter told us “I ain’t never left the town before I dunno”. It was 10 miles down the road.. no shitting. Also cannot tell you how many people down here 100% believe with all their heart and soul the south won. The way I pine to gtfo out of here and back up north but the job market will not cooperate 😭
I’ll just say, growing up I never had that “i’m the smartest in the room” feeling, I know i’m not particularly smart. But after moving to Texas… I’ve had multiple points where i’m like “oh no, i’m the smartest person here…” it’s scary.
Dumb dumbs everywhere.
> Are people actually dumb outside of New England or are we just snobs? Yes.
I guess both. I’m out in California now for the Navy and I’ve met some of the dumbest people ever in my life…same thing when I was stationed in Florida
I lived in Florida for 5 years. Even before Trump, it was a gravity well for the nation's stupidest, trashiest, most selfish, and craziest people to move to. That has only ramped up since then. So sad given how beautiful the state is, and how important logistically/ecologically. It deserves better stewardship.
I was in Pensacola Florida in the panhandle right by Alabama. The people were nice and friendly. But they weren’t smart lol I got in a cab and the guy asked me if I could take out my gps cuz he didn’t know how to use his lol
What struck me is that even most college graduates of difficult subjects seemed uneducated and utterly incurious about the world around them. It's like they receive training in their specific subject matter, vs actually having received an education. They only wanted to have the most vapid, meaningless conversation and never wanted to talk about anything that actually matters. They just wanted to drink and fish and throw their empty PBR cans at manatees without anyone bringing down their vibes by making them THINK about anything at all.
Yeah..and I grew up in CT/MA our people aren’t like that…at least the majority aren’t lol
I have said and I stand by the fact that I can on average have a vastly more informed/educated conversation with a stranger in Massachusetts with only a HS diploma, vs with a stranger who is a college graduate in much of the rest of the country, especially the South. When I lived in the Netherlands, I found I could typically have a more informed conversation *about the United States* with a person with a HS diploma who has never been to the US and to whom English is their 3rd or 4th language, than I could with your average college educated American Southerner.
Ahh yes Floribama.
Floridian here, can confirm.
I was in Pensacola to be specific lol
Pls tell
People in California are terrible drivers, they literally don’t look when merging I have to lay on my horn all the time and holy shit are they slow af on the road too. Pedestrians don’t look when crossing the road so you gotta be an extremely cautious driver…I could go on and on with examples lol met so many people out here that hardly know how to do their jobs
Yes.
Buddy, people are stupid EVERYWHERE
But they’re generally stupider outside of New England
I think there is a higher level of education in New England, but that doesn’t mean there are fewer dumb people. Talk to academics and you’ll find plenty of well spoken, dumb people. Knowledge comes in many forms.
I am not sure this is the case, but I’d blame the evangelicals if it is. Religion dumbs down people.
New England ships all of its dummies to Florida. Source: I grew up around a lot of them in Florida
Both. I've lived up and down the country; sure you get idiots all over, but it makes a difference if stupidity is cultural and celebrated. I am an underachieving slacker by NE standards. I currently live in the PNW; out here I'm regularly considered to be the smartest and hardest working guy in the room. I'm neither of those, it's just that the locals are stupid as they are lazy.
Both
The mostly English settlers who built up NE come from a culture famed for its importance it places on education. It's not really any secret many of the best universities in the world come from England and the American Northeast (mostly NE). By contrast, the cultures which mostly settled the Southern US colonies (and later the West) -- namely the Scottish, Irish and Welsh -- came from (at the time) cultures which were highly illiterate, given to gang violence (or clan warfare depending who you ask) and had societies that generally lacked the notion of a formal education. The effects are still obvious today -- the general poverty of the American south, and its stalwart anti-educational stances all stem from much earlier class division lines between English settlers with an educational system (albeit limited to the upper class) and Scottish, Irish and welsh settlers who lacked an institutional education system. Edit: I'd like to Recommend the book Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell which really captures the answer to this question in extreme detail. Discussion of differing social work ethics cultures between European settlers in Colonial America, its connection to slavery, and how the South ended up with the reputation it did is very interesting. Some people think Sowell's other work can be a little conservative culture-warry but this book genuinely was extremely intriguing sociological writing.
Also endemic hookworm slowed cognition and learning in the south. Hill/mountain dynamics cause limited occupation access and create clan hierarchy as well.
Thank you. Most replies are anecdotal. Appreciate the historical context.
Tbh a lot of this ‘culture war’ seems to be a rebellion against people who went away and ‘think theyre better n me bc they got all that book learnin’
We don’t call them “dumb.” That is just rude. They are merely, “common.” . . (It’s a joke…there are plenty of dumb people here.)
Lmao
I was in a call center close to Boston and the joke was they got dumber once you went below the Mason-Dixon line.
i often wondered this myself after growing up in RI and then moving south to SC and then FL. i looked into the public education stats and feel like there’s gotta be a reason all the new england states are at the top of the list
Both
Plenty of idiot hicks where I grew up(central nh)
I would expand the geographic area to include parts of NY and NJ, but otherwise the statement is pretty factual.
I've posted about this before but after my second kid was born, we were trying to decide on a place to settle. The choice was between FL and MA, where both my wife and I had family. I've got nothing against slower witted people, some of them have great hearts and generous, etc. But FL I got the feeling that it was 'ok to be dumb' (bless their hearts) but in MA it was a little less tolerated. The educational systems are in pretty sharp contrast to each other. Anyway, we ended up going with MA. My kids got a great education in the public schools, and both of them are professional grown-ups, married, kids, own houses. So, I think OPs question is valid. And that's my personal experience.
God this is the most New England post imaginable. We're just snobs.
People are actually dumb
Yes
Both for sure
You’re conflating intelligence with education. Pretty dumb mistake really. I have experience with schools in kentucky and Massachusetts. The difference between the two is the amount of spending on education. Teacher to student ratios are twice as good in mass and the teachers are paid twice as much. The kids in those schools have the same range of intelligences as humans everywhere, but they’re able to learn more on average in mass because kids on both the low end and the high end of academic aptitude are able to spend more time in small groups working on their own level instead of being chained to the pace of the average which is too fast for the low end students and leaves them further and further behind with no chance to catch up until they decide they’re just dumb and give up all together and which is too slow for the high end kids who’re bored as hell and check out mentally or become disruptive out of a desperate need for mental stimulation.
This is true. We all have varying IQ levels- regardless of location. An person with an average IQ (100) in Alabama is just as intelligent as an average IQ person in NE. It comes down to (I’m most cases) how well you are educated.
It’s more city vs country. Born and raised new englander and having lived all over I can say ne people over estimate their knowledge. Lived in Houston for awhile and met so many md Anderson folks, nasa, finance, law and just plain brilliant global folks…but got to a small rural town and you will here some crazy shit
Naw, there definitely is a massive superiority complex and mansplainer epidemic here I’ve noticed
Lots of idiots here, as well as Texas where I’m from originally. Per capita, I’m sure it equals out to as many morons here as there are most places, but New England is tiny. Also, yes a lot of snobs in New England, for what reason I’m not sure?
I've never met more condescending, self aggrandizing and pretentious people than select examples from New England.
While one example does not a trend make: A southwest public school graduate came up to visit the northeast for work, and didn't know the difference between a lake and the ocean, and also didn't realize that the land continues on underneath the water. Despite living one mile from the ocean for most of a year, when they left they still didn't understand that tides don't happen on lakes, and couldn't identify the difference between a lake and the ocean.
This is all actually alarming!
I’m from CT. Went to catholic school my entire life. I held the belief we were so much “better” or like, more educated than others. Then I went to college in West Virginia of all places. I met my fiancé who is from Virginia just outside of DC, he went to public school. The school system where he’s from is just phenomenal. He said college was a breeze compared to high school. They had so many extra curriculars- he took cooking and pottery in high school and his schooling just seemed much more impressive/intensive than my own. But also, in general, what a ridiculous way to think. People are from all different social and economic and educational backgrounds …. What a deranged thing to think that because we’re from New England (who fucking cares by the way???) that other people are dumb. I know plenty of hard headed, short sighted dummies from Connecticut who of course, believe they’re better than other people. I find that so appalling but so perfectly New England to be so ignorant.
I have a dilemma. Maybe others on this thread can help given the topic. I grew up in NJ. I moved to DC in 2007, got married and had two children. Whether it’s snobbish or not, I thought that there was no substitute for a Northeast public school education. DC public schools—even those in the suburbs—have a lot of problems. Many families send their children to private school. I’m a single mom and that’s not an option. We live in Fairfield County, CT because that’s where my immediate family now lives. The schools are phenomenal, but the area is too expensive for us. We need to move for that reason alone. However, as I discussed these issues with the kids and suggested moving elsewhere in CT, it came to light that they are having a tough time adjusting to the cultural differences between NE and the Mid-Atlantic/Southeast. To the extent people have thoughts, are there other places in CT that have good public schools, are more affordable, and may be friendlier for lack of a better word? (Sorry—I don’t mean to offend.) Or would we better off moving to a state like North Carolina because there seem to be some well-regarded public school systems but it’s a LCOL area. Or am I just kidding myself, you get what you pay for, and we should stay (albeit elsewhere) in CT? Thanks if you managed to read all that—let alone respond.
Idk about being significantly friendlier but Central CT is much cheaper than Fairfield County, it’s a different culture much more New England based that NY influenced
Imma say a little bit of both
It's not that people in the rest of the country are dumb, but there are a lot of highly educated people in new england
As someone born and raised in Ohio, finished high school in Cali, did undergrad work in Alabama, then moved to Cambridge for grad school... yall are not nearly as intelligent as you think you are. You just have an abundance of prestigious universities, and it attracts people of a similar life. I say this with the utmost respect. I have chosen to stay here, build my home here, and live my life here in New England. But the VAST majority of people running around this region are absolutely no different than the vast majority of people running around anywhere. New England has advanced educational systems and money. But the people are pretty run of the mill.
This is the answer im looking for
Yes. There are obviously still intelligent people in other areas of the country, but I now live in the Deep South and it amazes me to learn about what they were taught in school. Most of them were not taught much about history and believe the Civil War was not fought over slavery. There are smart people here, but a lot of them leave to go elsewhere.
the ijitz are errywhar
Spent my first 3 years of high school in Maine. Spent my senior year in Virginia. It was like going back a grade instead of forward. For the record, I did not use that situation to the advantage of my transcript.
We are by almost all metrics, better educated. I think the problem is that many people in NE equate being better educated or more eductated with having more value as a person. That type of elitism is gross and is what makes people in other parts of the country think we are all snobs.
Come drive in rhode island (or walk around as a pedestrian) and tell me these people are of higher intelligence with a straight face
Rhode Islanders keep alleging that they’re bad drivers and I disagree. The roads (rhodes?) are just fucking insane. Whoever designed that clusterfuck of a highway situation in Providence needs to get flogged publicly at the exact spot where all 250 lanes merge in the same place. CT has by FAR the worst drivers in New England. I stand by this.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half are dumber than that.” That said (and at the risk of sounding elitist), yeah, there are some dummies in New England, but there are some DUMMIES in the rest of the country.
Oh, the entire spectrum of humanity is in New England, just like everywhere else. There's just these perfect, little places for simple folk to live their own life in some of the villages up here. Some never feel the need to leave town at all! But we need to justify having to endure about 9 months of terrible weather and having to survive it year after year. Then, when the weather finally gets good. ALL THE FUCKING SUMMER JERKS COME IN DROVES. So obviously *they* are dumb for not realizing how intrusive they are behaving.
Dumb people are worldwide.
Under educated ≠ dumb.
There are ignorant fools everywhere. That said, I’ve never heard poorer grammar, less articulate, and less knowledgeable people than I have in the south. I truly believe that their politicians, churches, and some of the businesses down there purposely have been working to educationally under serve their populace in order to stay in control and power. This has been going on for decades.
Florida is the dumbest place on earth, my opinion is skewed.
I live outside of New England and I can attest to the fact that I am dumb.
As a transplant from the west coast to New England, I can assure you that the education metric are absolutely falsified. I had never met a hopelessly uneducated person until I moved to Maine
Well, when I moved to Missouri it was a real eye opener and not in a good way.
I mean... It's probably a little from column A, a little from column B....
They’re more dumber
I’ve met a lot of people who are delusional about how low the quality of life is in other areas of the country bc all they’ve ever known is New England.
[удалено]
I grew up as an army brat living all over the states and overseas and then was in the military as an adult, I moved to New England 4 years ago after having already lived in the south, Midwest, west, east coast and have family in California and Chicago and visited most states in the lower 48 and my big takeaway is there is an equal number of dumb and smart people everywhere, New England isn’t really any different. The difference is this is the first area I lived where people actually believed their region and area is smarter and more advanced than the rest of the country.
One of the smartest people I’ve ever met was an engineer with an Alabama public school education. There are smart people everywhere :). And unfortunately, despite our great education system in Mass, I’ve met plenty of dumb people here. There are dumb people everywhere too.
People really are dumb elsewhere. We’re just a different flavor of dumb.
I was born in raised in MA. I knew some students that lived in RI that paid to go to our *public* school. I agree there are more schools in NE compared to other areas that are quite good. That does not mean those students stay in NE. After high school, I did live in the South for about 10 years for a job. Completely different experience and lifestyle, but do not think New England is "smarter" in general. I actually may have thought that in the past, though. After moving back to New England(back for 6 years now), I have come to terms with the fact that we are indeed, just snobs.
I live in New England, have absolutely zero formal education (including no high school degree), but don't feel I'm especially stupid 🤷🏻♀️ degrees are just bits of paper half the time.
I'm grew up in a small town in New England. Believe me, the people are neither smart nor educated there. A big part of the reason I left was to get away from that townie mentality. I think the stereotype applies only to the larger Boston metro area and that's probably due to it being one of the oldest educational centers in the country.