British Children Most Resistant To Brainwashing

A survey of ten countries has been done for the British Council which has found that UK school pupils are the least globally aware. From highest to lowest the countries were ranked as follows; 1-Nigeria, 2- India, 3- Brazil, 4- Saudi Arabia, 5- Spain, 6- Germany, 7-China, 8-Czech, 9- USA, 10- UK.

The survey was carried out only among internet users which explains why the poorer countries do so well, seeing as in those internet users will be less representative of the wider population In fact judging from my email account most Nigerian internet users are sons or widows of General Abacha and desperately need my bank account to put money into. Judging from the BBC report it isn't a particularly good survey as it asks vague self assessment questions that don't actually measure awareness of anything, but rather whether the children are likely to share the values of the people who run the British Council:

Asked whether they saw themselves as citizens of the world or their own country, most saw themselves as global citizens - except in the UK, USA and the Czech Republic.

Young people in Brazil were among the most likely to agree with the statement "it is a good idea for schools in my country to have links or partnerships with schools in other countries" but the least likely to be in schools that had such links.

So as surveys go it isn't much cop. Mind you there has been a proper survey of European and American adults that was conducted recently for "France 24" which suggests that as a whole we tend to be less interested in foreign affairs than most countries of similar economic development.