>Let it be the fact that some or many (you tell me!) Americans are not like the audience I wrote about. It is also a fact that it will be hard or impossible to bring together a similar audience in the Netherlands. When we watch such an audience the first impression is: "Those people are soo childish". I wanted to confront the Americans here with that observation and have their reactions.

I had our daughter complaining to me about the overall atmosphere here being so antiintellectual. And that's from her high school, where she attends the magnet program (for the gifted), gets college credits, AP courses etc - IOW, in a place which should be the intellectually advanced school. She says that in some classes (science and math mostly) a few minutes go, every time they learn new stuff, to dispute on "what will we need this for".

I've had such disputes a few times with each generation of my students when I was teaching twenty plus some years ago, but I was teaching in the worst school (by average grade of incoming kids). My students mostly just passed through elementary, without picking much literacy, not to mention intellectual curiosity etc.

Which explains a lot about my passion for http://xkcd.com/263/ ... so refreshing.

(and for anyone out there who may ask for my opinion about those quizzes - I don't give a condemned-by-a-religion for trivia quizzes; give me Kviskoteka again at any time, that's where we were appreciated as keepers of the flame, not as poor fools who are expected to sweat, be nervous and applaud to themselves onscreen... and be it known that I was probably the only person ever in the history of Yugoslav television to roll a cigarette in the studio and be shown as such on the federal level ;)