But don’t worry, all 5th graders have to learn useless things. I think it is meant as memory exercise. My geography had as major part the agricultural differences between the Dutch provinces, which would have been quite useless knowledge even it wasn’t 40 years old and most agriculture had switched to growing tomatoes in greenhouses since.

A Polish friend once told me she had had to learn the names of all Polish kings from the year 900 to the present, plus the names of important court jesters.

No we don’t. And yet geography fascists still force this “knowledge” on 5th-graders all over the land.

You’re right that knowing the captials of all European countries isn’t that important, but realizing that Europe consists of independent countires is a bit more useful.

The comparison with US states misses a few points. US states and countries differ in a crucial respect: states don’t have a foreign policy. Washington, Hungary and Budapest are mentioned in newspaper articles on iternatioal affairs, Illinois is not, let alone its capital.

Also, the capitals of US states are not exactly the most important cities in the US. If Chicago was the capital of Illinois, and Houston, NYC and Los Angeles were state capitals, there might have been a point that Europeans should learn the capitals of at least some US states. But the way it is, I doubt even Americans have any use for learning state capitals.

Not really, although I do find that the commentators tend to have bigoted views regarding American and Israel, while at at the same time downplaying the prevalence of racism in the US in favor of a abstract class analysis. What I really hate is 5th-grade geography!

Did you know that Budapest used to be 2 separate cities on opposite sides of the river, Buda and Pest! That useless fact has been wasting space in my brain ever since I wrote a report on Hungary in 6th grade.

Hungary is a COUNTRY, and Illinois is a US STATE

So what? Illinois has a bigger population and probably a bigger GDP. I don’t claim that knowledge of Illinois is important, just more important than knowledge of Hungary.

A fine after dinner Tokaj, goulash, the films of…

At least someone bothered to argue for the importance of Hungary! Although I don’t think it’s a very convincing argument. The game-show contestant has probably eaten goulash and paprika, even without having heard of Budapest.

For this small central European nation has produced a disproportionate number of geniuses, mainly scientific, but also cultural titans.

As a Berkeley grad, I am well aware of the existence of Hungarian geniuses. Hungary, population 10 million, probably has had an influence on the world greater than many countries with populations of 20 million, even 30 million! I’m still convinced that my knowledge of a few trivial facts about Hungary is taking up valuable space in my brain that could be filled with something more important, like knowledge of Italian wine or Illinois tractor manufacturing.

A fine after dinner Tokaj, goulash, the films of Istvan Szabo, Miklos Jancso and Marta Meszaros, amongst other things.

I HAVE spotted a gap in the market in Hungary’s booming tourism industry. There are wine tours and eco-holidays, horse-riding and hunting, even pig-killing and sausage festivals. But those with more cerebral interests would surely sign up for a genius tour. For this small central European nation has produced a disproportionate number of geniuses, mainly scientific, but also cultural titans.

and tries to explain it with the fact that the Hungrians do indeed not speak French:

All of which begs the question, just why does Hungary produce so many scientific and creative geniuses? My own theory: the Hungarian language. Hungarian is one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn, as I can personally testify. It is a Finno-Ugric language, part of the Uralic family, which is quite separate to the Indo-European group, unrelated to any other European tongue except Finnish and Estonian, and then only distantly.

[...]

All of this turns young Hungarian brains into super-computers as they rapidly process all the calculations needed just to construct a sentence. After that, nuclear fission is child’s play.