geography
a few days ago, a survey conducted by national geographic was published, which concluded that young americans (teens and tweens if i'm not wrong) have very bad knowledge about geography.
a) most of them (60-70%) couldn't find iraq on a map of the middle-east (note that it wasn't a map of the entire world!!), inspite of the huge war and overhauling of the government there and the capture of good ol' sh and everything. couldn't find iran or israel either.
b) 90 bloody % of them couldn't locate afghanisthan on a map of asia (sweet god!!), inspite of the widespread media coverage of the american led overthrow of the taliban and the search for good ol' obl.
c) half of them didn't know that sudan is a country in africa (despite the darfur tragedy)
d) 3/4ths couldn't find indonesia (tsunami)
e) half of them couldn't locate india on a map of asia (and they all cry sour about jobs being outsourced there)
yep, this is in complete accordance with the little joke that i heard back in school days whose point was to ascertain that americans didn't know what "rest of the world" meant.
but do they atleast know what is where in their own country? here's the answer:
f) half couldn't find new york state on a map of the united states (and it's called the 'center of the universe')
g) a little less than half couldn't find louisiana and mississippi (torn by katrina)
next question - do they at the very least have a basic idea about directions in general? answer:
h) 1/3rd of the participants of the survey couldn't indicate which way 'north-west' on a map was (i pity those b#^%$^#s)
apparently, there was something good that came out of the survey as well:
i) a good number of them (70%) successfully located china on a map of asia. wooooooooooooooooooooooooow, that's like totally splendid, right? you know what else should've been tested? maybe they should've been asked to identify land masses and water bodies on a standard map!! that would've been such a nightmarishly complex task for them. those b#^%$^#s!!
for those of you who say "why the hell should i care where zimbabwe is, if i'm not a geographer and all i do is commute between my home and my workplace that is 3 bus-stops away?", you're so ignorant that i'm unable to find an equivalent analogy. this means that either i'm not a very good analogist or that i've just stumbled upon the absolute dumbest a person can ever get. pick your choice.
-w
a) most of them (60-70%) couldn't find iraq on a map of the middle-east (note that it wasn't a map of the entire world!!), inspite of the huge war and overhauling of the government there and the capture of good ol' sh and everything. couldn't find iran or israel either.
b) 90 bloody % of them couldn't locate afghanisthan on a map of asia (sweet god!!), inspite of the widespread media coverage of the american led overthrow of the taliban and the search for good ol' obl.
c) half of them didn't know that sudan is a country in africa (despite the darfur tragedy)
d) 3/4ths couldn't find indonesia (tsunami)
e) half of them couldn't locate india on a map of asia (and they all cry sour about jobs being outsourced there)
yep, this is in complete accordance with the little joke that i heard back in school days whose point was to ascertain that americans didn't know what "rest of the world" meant.
but do they atleast know what is where in their own country? here's the answer:
f) half couldn't find new york state on a map of the united states (and it's called the 'center of the universe')
g) a little less than half couldn't find louisiana and mississippi (torn by katrina)
next question - do they at the very least have a basic idea about directions in general? answer:
h) 1/3rd of the participants of the survey couldn't indicate which way 'north-west' on a map was (i pity those b#^%$^#s)
apparently, there was something good that came out of the survey as well:
i) a good number of them (70%) successfully located china on a map of asia. wooooooooooooooooooooooooow, that's like totally splendid, right? you know what else should've been tested? maybe they should've been asked to identify land masses and water bodies on a standard map!! that would've been such a nightmarishly complex task for them. those b#^%$^#s!!
for those of you who say "why the hell should i care where zimbabwe is, if i'm not a geographer and all i do is commute between my home and my workplace that is 3 bus-stops away?", you're so ignorant that i'm unable to find an equivalent analogy. this means that either i'm not a very good analogist or that i've just stumbled upon the absolute dumbest a person can ever get. pick your choice.
-w
posted by -w at 14:36
5 Comments:
Perhaps it's a simple case of incentive. for that matter how many people in india, who aspire to go to dubai and singapore know exactly where it is, or know that they probably end up in human trafficking scams in iraq? The average American probably regards iraq and new orleans as "issues" the country is facing. And school boards are still trying to deal with parents who want to replace Evolution with Intelligent Design. The President is not helping (although fortunately there are no rumors that the President is using an astrologer to make his decisions. so just protecting his conservative bases, I guess). So teaching kids about georgraphy is still a little lower on the Education Board's priority list. Forget kids, if you think adults are any better, check out Jay Leno's hilarious Jaywalking interviews of random people asking them general knowledge questions and some, who are in the education faculties or still in college are clueless. It's a really sad state, but who cares (heheheh). Btw, do you know where Darfur is and what's been going on in the Congo for the past decade?
Yup, I have seen a similar broadcast and one of them pointed to Australia, when asked for Iraq and even was trying to answer the question "From which side is it better to attack? From the east or from the west?" and you can guess which way he pointed when he said East.
But, I agree with the above comment. Many of us would fail to name the capital of Chattisgarh, leave alone pointing it in our country's map.
If someone is running to wikipedia to find the capital, here's the link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattisgarh
chaitan,
i agree that there are cases where people who aspired to go to dubai were swindled out of a lot of money, put on a steamer, and taken out into the ocean from mumbai to chennai. but how many of them were literate? the people surveyed here were graduates, aged 18 - 24. they actually went through higher education. like i said, being unaware of the "rest of the world" is 'normal' for any country's people, but what amazes me is that they're not aware of their own country and general directions either!!
i was slightly aware of darfur, but i got to know about congo only from your blog. yeah yeah, i'm below average when it comes to general knowledge and current affairs but i certainly know which state is located where on my country's map :)
gopi,
knowing the capitals of countries and states is a totally different skill. [i'm terrible at it, and i'm sure the same holds true for a majority of mankind :)]. it is way above being able to locate a state/country on a given map, don't you think?
Well, I think, knowing the locations and capitals of neighboring states not farther than hundreds of kms [India] is a lot easier than knowing the locations of innumerable states [US] spread over little less than half of the world.
Both are equally inexcusable :)
hey, i just realised that i made a huge assumption when i read the results of the survey. i assumed that these people were shown political maps with labels. that's why i was astonished at how they could be *that* stupid. it just struck me that they might have been shown just a political map without labels, in which case my mockery fails to apply. i know that zimbabwe is in africa, but if you show me a non-labelled map of africa and ask me to point it out, there's no way in hell i can do that!!
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