Maybe he meant British Hondouras, AKA Belize.
I suppose that depends on whether we think a generalist education beats a specialist education.
Ideally, everybody would be intelligent and educated both broadly and deeply. That’s not likely to happen.
So given the choice, I’d rather have my doctor tell me, “I don’t know how to find Turkey on a map, I don’t know the two national currencies of China, and I can’t say who is president of Mexico, but I can treat your disease” than the other way around.
Where it all falls down, at least in the U.S., is that even the dumb ones vote.
I’d settle for ignorant people, as long as they had the intellectual curiosity to educate themselves — if temporarily — about a subject that matters. Most people lack that essential curiosity, in my experience, and fail to recognize the depth of their own ignorance. Most students around me in school thought the classes were just to keep the sports and playtime from bumping into each other.
I think it is safe to say that it is certainly the very rare Canadian who can name all the states and their capitals. I think I have met one person in my whole life who’d know all fifty and be able to ring them off. Quite a few Canadians do not know how many states there are; you’d think 50 would be easy to remember, but I guess not. I have known reasonably intelligent and educated Canadians who didn’t know all the provincial capitals, and we only have ten.
Would that be Brooke’s more geographically (or would that be geologically; what the hell - riparian!) inclined sibling? 
I think this is part of it. If you live in the middle of Texas you can drive 8 hours in any direction and still be in the same state. And even if you’re crossing state boundaries it’s not like there’s huge differences in culture and language. “Wow! We left Kansas and entered Oklahoma. The wide open farmland is so different here. Let’s stop at that Cracker Barrel and take pictures of the natives.”
So because it’s not really too important to know local geography, it makes it easier to not know much about world geography.
Yeah, that’s it. Wasn’t just a dopey mistake on my part.
Which is worse, bad geography, or bad proofreading? YOU make the call!
I agree with this I mean, “we” love to joke about “you” Americans who don’t realise where different European countries are etc. but at the same time your average European couldn’t correctly locate more than a handful of US states on a map (those probably including California, Alaska, Texas, Florida).
What I would expect, of anyone, nationality irrelevant, would be that once a country or region became important in the news that they educate themselves as necessary before spouting their ideas/opinions in ignorance.
Maybe not capitals always, but if you tell me the name of even a small American city, I could probably tell you the state right away. This is because Americans have a rather useful habit of more often than not seeming to give the state after the city. Here, we’d just say "Sydney’ or ‘Melbourne’, but Americans give ‘Los Angeles, California’, or ‘Omaha, Nebraska’. It might seem redundant, especially in the case of large cities like L.A., but it does have a cumulative rote learning effect when heard over a lifetime.
When the Winter Olympics were in the US, we had a late night programme on TV here that was hosted by two Australian comedians in the US. They’d finish the show by giving the Australian weather. They’d set up a map on a tripod in a busy street, and ask passing Americans if they’d mind presenting the weather spot. Of course, the map had all the cities deliberately in the wrong spot, or they’d leave the big cities off, and put tiny country towns in, especially if they had humourous names like “Oodnadatta” or “Come-By-Chance” (pop. 50). Was it a cheap shot? Well, yeah. Was it funny? You bet.
At the risk of sounding like a total prick, I’d have to say the averge person is a dolt. So no, knowing more than local geography isn’t necessary if all you aspire to is going to the mall, the local bar and grocery store and your biggest interest is tending your lawn. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that, if that’s what you want. However I believe that to be able to appreciate, engage and compete in this world, the more you know the better off you are. That goes beyond just geography. As someone stated earlier, it is the yearning to better one’s self, to know more and to better understand that is so important, not just memorizing facts. I assume most of us here on the SDMB came here from an enjoyment of reading The Straight Dope in your local newspaper, the books, or the website. That interest already shows a desire to better understand the world around you. So you are all above-average persons (shameless attempt to cover my ass, lol).
Actually truth be told, since I had to spend the 3rd grade memorizing geography flash cards, then I expect everyone else should as well, gosh darn it! 
I remember doing a country quiz as a ten year-old. I’ve forgotten all the countries we had to do except for two, because I remember thinking, ‘Yep, Iraq’s on the left, Iran’s on the right’. I think that’s a reasonably good standard of education for a bunch of Aussie ten year-olds. It could always be better, but it was adequate.
It’s actually a cool rainy-day game to play at home too, if you introduce an element of fun into it. My son loved my globe, so I bought him an atlas (not a kiddie atlas either, but a quality one) because I remember also loving maps as a kid. So, we play capitals, and also flags.
Him: What’s the capital of Germany?
Me: Ummmm… Brasilia?
Him: No, silly.
(lots of giggles)
Me: Berlin
Him: That’s too easy. What’s the capital of Madagascar?
He was only seven when I taught him all that. Or more to the point, I convinced him it was fun, and he taught himself most of it.
It doesn’t BEAT a specialist education but I would have thought a basic generalist education was nesscary to get your MD. I wouldn’t expect my doctor to write a thesis on Turkish history, but I’d expect him to know where it WAS.
Eh, I think that’s a decent enough level of understanding…
Indygrrl, there’s a book called Don’t Know Much About Geography, that is decent, and yeah, there’s no need for poring over maps and memorizing things to learn a little about Geography. It’s kind of like History; people get turned off by all the memorization/preponderance of war junk that they get forced on them at school.
As a child, I learned basic USA geography – locations of states, plus the names of the capitals – by repeatedly assembling a puzzle similar to this one (although mine had an alphabetical list of states, with each state’s name followed by the name of the capital, in the lower right corner of the board). There are also plenty of online “drag and place” maps. This one is for the states, while this puzzle (with five difficulty levels) is devoted to Africa. Google can help you locate similar interactive maps for Europe, Asia, Canada, or just about any region of the world. Some of them are obviously geared to children (such as the USA “drag and place” one I selected, with its “Good!” and “Try again!” sound effects), but the information they impart is solid.
If you don’t already own a globe or a wall map of the world, buy one (or both) and you’ll be able to look up any unfamiliar country or major city whose name you hear on the news or in general conversation. A world atlas is good for more specialized study – it’s my sister’s standard gift for friends who are getting married or having housewarming parties, as it’s a handy item, but hardly ever associated with festive occasions.
If you want more tips, why not start a separate “Best way to learn geography?” thread? Incidentally, I see that Jeopardy! is about to start – that show affords plenty of opportunity to learn basic information, as “World Capitals”, “Countries That Start With S”, and similar categories appear with regularity.
I lived in Scotland for a while, and I have to say, I don’t think the Scots are any different than the Americans in this regard. When Scots take Ryan Air flights to Eastern European cities for cheap hen and stag parties, they’re on average no more interested in the local culture than your stereotypical American tourist. They’re just looking for cheap beer, cheap hotels, and some cool-looking old stuff in the background. And there’s more than a little feeling that the locals in these cities are “somehow intrinsically inferior morally, socially, culturally, etc. because they’re not Scots.”
Not that I’m particularly picking on the Scots and Americans for this; it’s a common attitude among tourists from lots of countries – perhaps especially wealthy, first world countries. Americans may be “perceived” to be the ones who do it the most, but that’s just because people are looking for it.
Having said all the above, I will agree that on average most people around the world know far more about Americans than we know about them. I don’t know why that’s so – maybe it’s a result of our movies and television being exported around the world, or because of the inordinate attention the US receives in a lot of places. (I’m always amazed at how much coverage the US gets in the European press, even for seemingly irrelevant things.) HOWEVER, I think people are too quick to assume that because a non-American knows (or thinks they know) a lot about the US then they must know a lot about the rest of the world as well. In my experience this is usually NOT true. For example, I can’t count how many times I’ve heard Canadians use their knowledge of a few facts about American geography and history as the basis for their supposedly “international” education and outlook. Sorry, that doesn’t work for me any more. Now, if they can speak to me with some knowledge about China’s geography and Brazil’s politics – then I’ll be impressed with their international outlook.* But those people are as few and far between as their US counterparts.
*Oh, and just knowing about someplace because the US was involved there once and you like to collect examples of American “imperialism” doesn’t count either. For example, in conversations abroad the only time I’ve ever heard Chile mentioned is in regards to Pinochet and the CIA – no one seems to know anything about the country before or after American involvement. An Irish guy once lectured me about the evils the US commited in Vietnam, but he had no idea about the French origins of the war. :rolleyes:
Oh, and to the person above who asked about how to learn geography: check out http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/. Some great games on there. Someone else mentioned it above, but it was buried in a link, and it deserves repeating.
Actually, I think there’s something wrong with that, and it has already been mentionned by a previous poster. It’s that these people get to vote hence that their completely uninformed opinions, beliefs, or whims get to shape the political landscape and the world in which we live.
Besides, some people somehow manage to reach positions of power while maintening a disturbingly high level of ignorance.
Damnit! Here I was wondering how I’d been able to miss the existence of a country with as incredibly cool a name as Monsterratt, and it turns out it was just a simple misspelling.
Yes, and it was once considered the mark of an educated man that he could tell the time of day from where the shadows fell, without waiting for the church bells to ring.
But today both of these seem to me to fall into the area of unneeded trivial knowledge. People can do just fine in their daily life without knowing them.
I’m a geography idiot. It’s one of those things I just simply am not good at. I avoid discussions of geography because, well, I always turn out looking like a buffoon. Until last year, I thought Greenland was part of Europe. I thought Central America belonged with South America. The problem for me is my brain just has a way of arranging things visually that sometimes gets “mis-wired”. I visualize things like the calendar, time in general, and maps, completely incorrectly. I try to keep up with world events, and because I’ve read enough news reports, I know roughly where Israel and Palestine are in relation to each other, but to find either on a map would probably stump me. It was on a flight to Thailand that I discovered that New Zealand is not, as I’d always believed, west of Australia.
Strangely, for all of my geography troubles, I am a very good navigator. I very rarely get lost, especially if it’s a place I’ve been at least once before. The same thing that makes finding places on a map difficult for me makes navigation work extremely well for me. I can follow my mental map with little trouble, but I tried to draw my map on paper, it would probably have very little resemblance to reality.
My point is simply that just because I can’t find something on a map doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t know anything about it. With me, it’s not an indication of unawareness, and it’s not a sign that I’ve never even looked it up on a map - I’m constantly looking at maps to try and get an awareness of the geographical influences on global issues. But what I end up with is something like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces have been connected to four or five other pieces, but haven’t actually been united into one picture yet. So while I might know where Israel and Palestine are in relation to each other, or South Africa and Zimbabwe, or England and Ireland, if you showed me a map of the world and pointed to Ireland, I’d have no idea where Israel was in relation.