The ignorance of US people comes from the fact that they are not educated about other countries at all. For average American their world is US only. As if other countries do not exist.
But same cannot be said about UK as such. Here I find them much more educated about rest of world including India and Pakistan.
Around 3 years back I met one British-Italian person in hospital where I was waiting for some checkup. We started talking and he said that India is a miracle that such a diverse and large country can remain democratic and secular whereas many tiny countries cannot sustain democracy. I felt proud about that.
I have to clarify many times to people that although there are small number of similarities between India and Pakistan however there are large differences between them.
