Alaska
I thought Alaska was an island but I’m not ‘stupid’— I blame my teachers
She’s schooling teachers over her bad education.
A geographically confused content creator is calling for an overhaul of the American education system, saying she lacks general knowledge, despite earning As and Bs in her high school classes.
Sabriena Abrre, 25, grew up in Utah but now lives with her husband and two young children in Canada, where she believes the general population is better educated.
In a TikTok video that has clocked up close to 830,000 views, Abrre alleged that she thought Alaska was an island not connected to the rest of the North American continent — until a Canadian told her so.
“The list of things that I didn’t know about Canada, about the United States, about geography as a whole, it’s just appalling — it’s criminal,” the social media star said.
“I was 18 years old, dating my Canadian boyfriend, and he was telling me all about where he’s working in Canada, and the topic of Alaska came up, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute, you can drive to Alaska?’” she recalled, expressing embarrassment at her ignorance to that fact.
Abrre asserted that she wasn’t a “stupid American” and instead placed blame on the U.S. school system.
The content creator claimed that American education “needs a good revision” or, perhaps, an “overhaul of the entire curriculum.”
While Abrre previously believed Alaska was an island, she insisted that she knew it was not located in the Pacific Ocean, as Hawaii is.
“I know that Alaska is cold,” she stated. “Everybody knows that Alaska is cold … But did I know that it was connected by land? No, I did not know that.”
While many might be stunned by Abrre’s admission, it’s been well-reported that other young Americans lack basic general knowledge.
According to NBC, a staggering 63% of surveyed Gen Z and millennial Americans do not know that 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust.
Meanwhile, the non-profit publication Pacific Standard reported that Gen Z students “no longer have the patience to read denser, more difficult texts like classic literature,” with only 12% of the demographic reading some form of print material, such as a physical book or newspaper, on a daily basis.
Still, several young TikTokers were stunned that Abrre didn’t realize Alaska was not an island.
“You don’t have globes in school??” one commentator quizzed.
However, others agreed that the American education system was failing its students when it came to the acquisition of general knowledge.
“I went to school in the USA and moved to Spain when I was 11,” one wrote. “The things I had to learn when I got here, that I already should have known, was shocking.”