Encouraging isolationism: Americans and geography
By 
Shan-ul-Hai •
May 29, 2008
Plenty of us have heard that over 60% of Americans aged 18-24 couldn’t find Iraq on a map of the Middle East (yes, a map of the Middle East… not even a map of the world) in a 2006 survey (that’s three years after the start of the war). I just took a look at that survey and found a few other interesting facts:
- Only 50% think that map-reading skills are “absolutely essential”
- Despite that fact, 75% couldn’t find Iran or Israel on the same Middle East map.
- 65% couldn’t find the UK on a world map.
- 88% couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.
- Half of people couldn’t find India or Japan on the Asian map
- 70% couldn’t find North Korea, and only 37% knew that the North/South Korea border is more heavily fortified than the US/Mexico border and the China/Russia border (both of which are mostly barren).
- Only 35% knew about the huge earthquake in Pakistan, which had killed 70,000 people only a few months before the survey.
- 74% of people thought that English is a more common first language than Mandarin (which was picked by 18%).
- When asked to pick the country with a Muslim majority (between Indonesia, India, Armenia, and South Africa), 48% thought it was India (which is only 10% Muslim) and only 25% picked Indonesia (which is over 80% Muslim).
- More interestingly, people thought that the Mississippi’s flow had something to do with Hurricane Katrina.
Apparently, we don’t know anything about the world. This is why the rest of the world looks down on Americans… geography is no longer an important part of our school curricula. How do we expect to succeed through globalization if 90% of our youth don’t even know where Afghanistan is?
Popularity: 61% [?]
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Hello there. I was sent a link to your blog by a friend a while ago. I have been reading a long for a while now. Just wanted to say HI. Thanks for putting in all the hard work.
Jennifer Lancey
Growing up as an Army brat I had the benefit of actually traveling and visiting many places around the world that most Americans only read about. What you have stated here is right on the money. I clearly remember having a World Culture class when I was in school many moons ago. I’ve put 4 kids through the public school system here and not one of them had a similar class at all.
I remember one of my kids came home and he had a two week module in history class where they were taught “world history.” Go figure - they learn everything about world history and culture in a two-week period.
Anyway, to get to the point, one of the things he had to do was identify how American culture has affected other nations. Having lived in Germany and Greece and having traveled through most of Europe, I told him about all the fast food places (McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Subway, etc) that I could find in any country I visited in Europe and how odd it was that I could also order a beer in one of those places. His teacher told him that was not a good example because none of the countries in Europe had those things. Really? I was on the phone with his teacher the next day extolling the virtues of real experience over text-book and that sometimes the teachers should become learners if they want to better educate our children.
Apparently, this teacher did not understand what an impact introducing fast food to the European culture had - not only the fact that prior to fast food joints like these - most Europeans have local delis, meat markets, bakeries, and vegetable markets unlike here in the U.S. and the effect it had on those small businesses and the diets, but the whole Americanization of Europe in and of itself practically started with McDonald’s.
I blame teachers who only teach from a book without having experience as part of the main problem here.
Excellent post!
“But goshamighty, we’s the bestest country inna whole wide world! We ain’t gotta know stuff about furriners!”
Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Why are my fellow citizens so damned stupid?
And this, dear blogger, is why homeschooling is so superior to public (government) schooling…
Well, I’ll admit that homeschooling will help build better theoretical knowledge… but I’ve met plenty of homeschooled kids who didn’t have the proper social skills that you need to survive in society. I think the best solution is a combination of both… in my case, for instance, my parents took a deep interest in my education. Because of that, I ended up with a standard of education that is comparable to what I’ve seen in my homeschooled counterparts (although I’ll admit that they do tend to be much better educated with religion).
Let’s see how logical you really are. You take yourself as the standard and compare the average American against yourself and your particular background and interests, and decide that the average American comes up short. Then you decide that this must be the reason why Americans are hated (because many of them are not like you…). Maybe there are other reasons–complex reasons, reasons outside the control of the average American, good reasons, bad reasons, etc. for the “hatred” of Americans overseas.
But it’s difficult for a human being to judge things without putting themselves and their experiences front and center. But is it logical?
When did I take myself as the standard? I don’t see where you got that idea. Also, I didn’t say that this is the SOLE reason why Americans are hated… but based on my international experience, it’s definitely one of the biggest. There is a great deal of worldwide resentment for the fact that Americans don’t know anything about the rest of the world; it leads to a belief that Americans don’t care about the rest of the world.
I just put forth some numbers. You can interpret them however you want to. What exactly did I say that doesn’t make logical sense?
Rereading your original post, I see that I managed to merge your opinions with some of the other posters and took it for granted that you consider other people to be less knowledgeable about the world than yourself and thus feel that they somehow need to make up this lack if we ever hope to win the admiration of the rest of the world. How’s that for an imagination? But I stand by my assertion that many people who criticize Americans often have themselves in mind as one of the “good” Americans who know lots about the rest of the world.
I don’t think it’s logical to take numbers without context and draw sweeping conclusions. I bet that what is at root of this “geography deficit as a problem” is the idea that if only Americans cared more about the rest of the world we’d behave more like those “good” Americans where foreign and domestic politics are concerned. That’s what is really annoying about America to many in the world. We won’t “act” like they think we should. Sorry so long. Thanks for the debate.
Remember Hurricane Rita a few years ago? This is the one that caused Houston to be evacuated. I heard a story on the radio afterwards in which some people were complaining that it wasn’t fair that poor people had to use the freeway to evacuate and so got bogged down in traffic for hours. Rich people had the benefit of their GPS devices and so could take any old back road and get where they wanted to go. I am still amazed that these people doing the complaining had never apparently heard of a road map or learned how to read one.
[…] in Indonesia is a Muslim? Well, it’s probably not the latter… because most Americans don’t even know that Indonesia is a Muslim country. So they must be basing their conclusions on faulty assumptions or random rumors… and if […]