I wish the teachers in the US were more like that.
I think in all of my schooling, there was only one short 9-week class on World History.
Everything I've learned about other countries I've pretty much learned myself, through reading and stuff like that.
Although usually I'm a bit out of date on the things I know, since I learn about the past before the present ;D

And, I make no claims that I am an expert on Geography and Languages. Really, I don't. I'm more of a science/maths gal. xD

I don't think you need to be an expert. I think most Brits would be able to get at least 10 of these right (as you did).

I'm going to agree with you here, because we only had ONE World Geography class and it was in early high school years. The rest were basically all American history/geography. I'm going to take a stab at it!:
1. Portugal - Portugese.
2. Austria - Austrian? :P Or.. don't know ;).
3. Belgium - I'm thinking Dutch?
4. New Zealand - English.
5. Luxembourg - I'm not sure on this one. I'm going to say maybe.. French.
6. The Netherlands - I don't know.
7. Scotland - English, but I'm sure there are other languages spoken as well.
8. Wales - English.
9. Ireland - I think English is primarily spoken there as well?
10. Canada - English.
11. Brazil - Portugese.
12. Mexico - Different variations of spanish.
13. South Africa - I don't know.

Now I'll go see how silly my answers are in comparison to others :P.

And excuse my misspelling of Portuguese! Bia has now rang me out over it ;).

THAT'S RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! SO WRONG.

YOU FORGOT FRENCH, YOU CANADIAN-IGNORANT SLOB. hahaha. I love you

ROFL THANK YOU ;D
I was totally thinking 'wtf where is french?! JESSA AND I TOTEZ HAVE TERRIBLE CONVOS IN FRENCH, ITS A CANADIAN THING.'
;D

I wonder how many Brits would know that Spanish is spoken quite widely in the Mid-west states and the Floridas, because those areas were once claimed for Spain. Or that French is spoken in parts of Louisiana because it was once a colony of France? I think that in general British people are just as ignorant of the USA as the USA is of Europe.

Brits can be incredibly ignorant of their own kingdom, too! A lot of English people seem to assume that everyone in Wales speaks Welsh, or that Welsh is their first language, for example. I once saw a Welsh student at university told that his English was very good! As if he hadn't been speaking it since he was 9 months old, or something! God help us all!

I would of thought the different languages widely spoken in some states was common knowledge, especially as it is something we are all taught at school upto year 9.

If we were all taught it at school upto year 9... why wasn't I?! Why does "all" exclude me!? Haha!

How old are you? When I was in secondary things were changing about but I don't know if the scheme was fairly new when I was taught it, but I assume history was compulsory before.

I did history up to degree level, and wasn't taught anything about the states until my second year of university! What exactly did they teach you in history about America?
History at my school was always English history, or sometimes Nazi history.

Our American history was done when we were doing the slave trade and the war of independence, so we had to learn about states having individual laws and such and were taught the main languages of states, where english wasn't spoken by all.

Gosh I learnt nothing about America and I left school in 2004 so not that long ago.

From your comment about IT at your school, I'm not surprised!

Well all IT was concerned with was how to use Word and Powerpoint, hardly pressing. I was the only person who got full marks in the CLAIT test though I remember haha.
I stopped studying history in year 9, up until then it was all English history. And I don't know why we would have been taught the different languages of the different states. So really why would we have needed to study America? Our school was more concerned with the core subjects.

Maybe the fact that we murdered their people, then enslaved millions and packed them off to America, an education is a waste of time if you are too ignorant to use it. My flatmate for example, very clever, but very ignorant, to the point where he is a international politics student yet believes the UK is a capitalist country, he could use his brain if he was willing to make the effort to learn about people outside of the UK.

See I'd rather study countries with a long history, such as Greece, Italy etc which I did. I loved history but preferred other subjects over it.
I don't know if we did the slave trade or if that was reserved for GCSE students. I know quite a bit about it from my own research anyway, which I find sticks in my head far better than anything I was taught. Then again the fact that my history teacher WAS David Brent distracted me a little ;D

Oh yes, I forgot, we did that too. We watched some horrible movie in history with hangings when we were learning about the slave trade. I believe it's rather famous, but can't for the life of me remember the name of it. And we learned about Martin Luther King and all that stuff.

Yeah, we did the cold war, but that was generally more focused on the European side anyway. We did World War I and World War II every single year, it felt like!

It excludes me too!

Oh lord the mid-west. /cries
Our stop signs say 'ALTO' on them now.
ITS NOT RIGHT I TELL YOU.

And I'm pretty sure the spanish-speaking thing in the midwest is a more recent development. Not saying there weren't people who spoke it or anything.
But my parents said that when they were growing up that there was hardly anyone who spoke spanish at all and in the last like 20 or so years, its flourished.


But seriously, I doubt a lot of AMERICANS know that people in Louisiana speak French at all.

Now, now, give some Southerners some credit. We know, because after all, a lot of people love Mardi Gras and crawfish. ;-D lol.

Some ;)